Topic: social exploration

Mammalian reproduction is highly energy intensive, and requires an animal to prioritize feeding or sociosexual interaction, depending on need and opportunity. We have recently shown that two leptin-sensitive populations – leptin receptor-expressing (LepRLH) and neurotensin-expressing (NtsLH) neurons of the lateral hypothalamus – act in a complementary manner to enable resistance to hunger and gate the pursuit of social needs (Petzold et al., Cell Metab 2023).Currently, using single-cell Ca2+ imaging in freely moving mice, we found that LepRLH neurons not only preferentially encoded conspecific

Hippocampal subregion CA2 has been implicated in social memory. CA2 contains spatially modulated “place cells” that change their firing patterns (“remap”) during social interactions (Alexander et al., 2016). Our preliminary results suggest that CA2 place cell remapping is driven by the olfactory content of social experiences. Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with abnormal social behaviors. To our knowledge, the activity of CA2 place cells during social interactions has not been examined in relation to FXS. Here, we recorded CA2 place cells in wildtype (WT) c