Social interactions

…can reflect lived experience, social interactions and community priorities. It explores the motivation, working methods and aims of co-production in epidemiological modelling.

Social interactions across animal species are governed by the interplay between multimodal sensory information and the internal states of each animal. Here, we investigate this interplay in female Drosophila (fruit fly) as she engages with the male during courtship, a highly dynamic social behavior. Previous work has shown that the male fly's courtship song is shaped by the subtle feedback cues from the female and is influenced by his internal states1,2. However, in the case of females, prior work has focused only on predicting her walking speed averaged over minutes3,4; her fast timescale res

Our research explores the neural mechanisms underlying flexibility during natural social interactions - how animals process dynamic sensory cues from a partner, make decisions, and pattern the appropriate action for the current context. During Drosophila social interactions, males produce time-varying songs via wing vibration, while females arbitrate mating decisions. We discovered that male song structure and intensity are continually sculpted by the movements of the female, over timescales ranging from tens of milliseconds to minutes, and we have investigated the underlying circuit mechanism

Social interactions play a major role in primates. They rely in part on our ability to extract relevant information from the voices of our conspecifics. fMRI studies have highlighted Temporal Voice Areas or ‘voice patches’ in the brain of humans, macaques and marmosets : these regions of cortex selectively respond to conspecific vocalizations, but little is known about how individual voice patch neurons encode vocal information, particularly on caller identity. The ‘Norm-based coding’ hypothesis from face perception research suggests that neuronal activity could be modulated by the acoustical

Despite its critical importance to social animals, the mechanisms underlying the establishment of new social interactions remain largely unknown. We identified a role for neurons expressing neuropeptide B/W receptor-1 (NPBWR1) in the central amygdala (CeANpbwr1 neurons) in this process. CeANpbwr1 neurons were activated only during physical interactions with unfamiliar mice, but not with familiar mice. Manipulations of the neuronal circuit comprising CeANpbwr1 neurons suggested that this excitation was essential for sustaining physical interactions with novel conspecifics. Remarkably, stimulati

Social factors play a critical role in human drug addiction, and humans often consume drugs together with their peers. In contrast, in traditional animal models of addiction, rodents consume or self-administer the drug in their homecage or operant self-administration chambers while isolated from their peers. Here, we describe HOMECAGE (“Home-cage Observation and Measurement for Experimental Control and Analysis in a Group-housed Environment”), a translationally relevant method for studying oral opioid self-administration in mice. This setting reduces experimental confounds introduced by social

The effects of spaceflight are induced by three concomitant factors: poor social interactions in a reduced living space, microgravity, and the radiation bath. To understand how these parameters can influence behaviors, animal studies are being carried out, modelling each of these parameters independently or not of the others. These studies allow to challenge different strategies of countermeasures to prevent spaceflight multisystemic deconditioning. In the NEBULA project, we developed an original suspension system that allows interaction between 2 conspecifics, to tackle the effects of microgr

…Social memory impairments have also been described in AD. However, neuronal oscillatory activity in hippocampal CA2 subfield, a region that plays a crucial role in the formation and

Social interactions imply dynamic and synergic feedback loops in which actions, reactions, and internal states of each partner is modulated by the others. In this framework, interacting brains appear to operate as an integrated system, showing shared neural dynamics coevolving over time. In-phase brain oscillation alignment have been found in interacting people, but also in monkeys, bats, and mice. However, how emotional alterations can influence interbrain synchrony (IBS) is still unclear. Here, combining microendoscopic calcium imaging within the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC or Area 24) wi

…the notion of mice exhibiting prosocial actions, such as helping and rescuing behavior. However, prior studies have primarily focused on single or pair-housed animals, leaving a gap in our understanding of how social interactions contribute to the underlying mechanisms of helping behavior. To answer this question, we have built "mice cities" to observe the social structure of mice in a group. A male and a female group of ten animals, 5 siblings and 5 non-siblings each, were placed in a large enclosure of three interconnected boxes with

Fruitful social interactions require constant monitoring of one's own and others’ actions. We previously showed that macaques playing a video game in a controlled laboratory setting are able to perform joint actions (JA) successfully, when asked to control moving visual cursors displayed on a screen. Yet, while error monitoring is fundamental to optimize motor dyadic performances, it remains unexplored whether macaques are aware of acting together in this abstract context. To fill this gap, we analyzed spontaneous task-unrelated head movements during dyadic performance to investigate their awa

One reason for humans’ advanced social interaction skills is their capacity to continuously make predictions about the state of mind of others. Predictions (or expectations) about one’s social environment can be formed based on the perception of others’ actions, knowledge, and beliefs. A key region for this complex social ability in humans is the temporoparietal junction, and recent evidence suggests that the evolutionary origin of this area was already present in their close primate ancestors. Like humans, dogs are also sensitive to others' actions or intentions, but the neural mechanisms sup

To investigate the origins of social cognition, we need to look beyond the human species. Investigations within primates constrain us to a linear understanding of evolution. Dogs have emerged as an alternative animal model because our last common ancestor with them dates back 95-100 million years. They have advanced socio-cognitive skills, even when discounting recent domestication effects, not present in many other mammals, suggestive of convergent rather than linear evolution. Moreover, they can be trained to perform awake and unrestrained functional magnetic resonance imaging. To better und

Constant monitoring of behavioral patterns shapes successful social interactions. Factors such as interpersonal distance and emotional expressions prompt specific responses to facilitate functional social exchanges. Despite extensive research on these topics, studying how these features influence human physiological responses in an ecological yet controlled environment has often proven challenging. Moreover, the relation between a possible dysregulation of these physiological reactions and social anxiety remains unclear. Using a 3D virtual setting, we found increased physiological responses (

Stress is an adaptive mechanism that enables an optimal response to danger. However, chronic stress disrupts normal bodily functions and can lead to various disorders. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is involved in the regulation of stress responses. One of the output targets of the mPFC is the lateral hypothalamus (LH), a brain region that regulates innate behaviours known to be affected by stress. In this work, we analysed effects of optogenetic stimulation of mPFC inputs to LH on innate behaviours in freely behaving mice exposed to different stressors.Optogenetic stimulation of mPFC pro

Inborn errors of immunity (IEI), also known as primary immune deficiencies, are rare diseases caused by distinct pathogenic genetic variants, affecting approximately 1 in 25,000 people. While IEI are primarily associated with increased susceptibility to infection, autoimmunity, and cancer, recent clinical research indicates their impact extends to multiple systems, including the brain. Specifically, activated PI3K-Delta Syndrome (APDS), a rare genetic disorder resulting from mutations in the Pik3cd gene encoding the PI3Kδ enzyme, has been recently linked to neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD).O

…behavior in naturalistic settings in social and multi-subject tasks in a unified manner remains a significant challenge. Modeling the behavior of different subjects performing the same task requires partitioning the behavioral data into features that are common across subjects, and others that are distinct to each subject. Modeling social interactions between multiple individuals in a freely-moving setting requires disentangling effects due to the individual as compared to social investigati

Peripersonal space (PPS) defines the portion of space where interactions between our body and the external environment more likely occur. There is no physical boundary defining the PPS with respect to the extrapersonal space, but PPS is continuously constructed by a dedicated neural system integrating external stimuli and tactile stimuli on the body, as a function of their potential interaction. This mechanism represents a primary interface between the individual and the environment. In this talk, I will present most recent evidence and highlight the current debate about the neural and computa

Highly-social animals, like humans, live with many individuals, and interact with each other at times, locations and manner of their choosing. However, neurophysiological investigations of social responses are rarely conducted in such rich settings. To determine how the brain represents social information in a naturalistic setting – when the animals’ behavior is not experimentally constrained to a particular task – we constructed a bat cave for a colony of 5–10 bats of both sexes. The bats lived there 24×7, free to engage in any behaviors. Every day we conducted a ~3 hour experimental session,

In social interactions, theory of mind (ToM) is postulated as the reason for why humans can successfully interact with novel people, given that everyone has beliefs, desires, and goals. Most ToM studies design explicit models to represent other agents’ mental states, using this to inform behavior. However, it is unclear whether or how ToM could emerge through learning to act in a social environment. We sought to identify network mechanisms of ToM in a recurrent neural network trained to play a competitive neuroscience task that requires ToM. The network, trained using deep reinforcement learni

…neural codes for spatial behaviors and social behaviors, in flying bats – using wireless neurophysiology methods that we developed – and will highlight new neuronal representations that we discovered in animals navigating through 3D spaces, or in very large-scale environments, or engaged in social interactions. In particular, I will discuss: (1) A multi-scale neural code for very large environments, which we dis

My lab is focused on how brain encodes and modulates social interactions. Intraspecific social interactions are integral for survival and maintenance of society among all mammalian species. Despite the importance of social interactions, we lack a complete understanding of the brain circuitry involved in processing social behaviour. My lab investigates how the hypothalamic orexin (hypocretin) neurons and their downstream circuits participate in social interaction behaviours. These neurons are located exclusively in the hypothalamus that regulates complex and goal-directed behaviours. We recentl

Body motion is a fundamental signal of social communication. This includes facial as well as full-body movements. Combining advanced methods from computer animation with motion capture in humans and monkeys, we synthesized highly-realistic monkey avatar models. Our face avatar is perceived by monkeys as almost equivalent to a real animal, and does not induce an ‘uncanny valley effect’, unlike all other previously used avatar models in studies with monkeys. Applying machine-learning methods for the control of motion style, we were able to investigate how species-specific shape and dynamic cues