Topic: social dominance

An animal’s dominance status strongly affects its behavioural decision making in social contexts. While the thalamocortical circuitry involved in the establishment of male mouse social status has received much attention in the literature, it remains unclear how these representations of rank modulate downstream areas to yield distinct behavioural phenotypes. Here we report in vivo miniscope recordings from the medial preoptic area (MPOA) and the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) - two areas involved in social decision-making that show differential c-Fos expression depending on social rank. Record

In mice, social dominance has been associated with anxiety trait and reduced stress resilience. However, the underlying mechanisms of this association remain unknown. Here, we tested the hypothesis that adult hippocampal neurogenesis may underlie dominance behaviour and anxiety.First, our observations in group-housed males unveiled that dominant mice exhibited heightened trait anxiety and vulnerability to stress when compared to their subordinate counterparts. Furthermore, we observed a reduction in hippocampal neurogenesis specifically within the ventral hippocampus of stressed dominant mice.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a neuromuscular syndrome caused by mutations within the DMD gene. DMD is associated with intellectual disability, behavioral disturbances and neuropsychiatric disorders. The presence and severity of these disorders, particularly social behavior disorders, seem to vary according to the position of the mutations affecting one or more brain dystrophins. However, the genotype-phenotype relationships underlying these troubles are not defined. In this study, we explored the involvement of brain dystrophins in social disorders using several DMD mouse models. We us