Topic: social preference

Sex-steroid hormones powerfully influence internal states, mood, and social drives. In many species, including mice, females exhibit increased sexual receptivity during the peri-ovulatory phase following an estrogen surge. However, we lack understanding of how these hormones alter neural computations to regulate social behaviors, particularly their effects on neural dynamics in key regions for top-down control of social choice, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). One potential, but unexplored role of the estrogen surge is to enable persistent neural states to facilitate costly behavio

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder which core features are social communication impairments and repetitive behaviors. AMP activated protein kinase (AMPK) is a Ser/Thr kinase which is critical in synaptic plasticity function. Until now, there are no effective medications to improve core symptoms for ASD. Some reports showed that AMPK expresses abnormally in autism model. ENERGI is a purine compound, activating AMPK to improve self-healing by increasing ATP. ENERGI has been used in many diseases include neurodegenerative diseases. Hence, we aimed to identify efficacy

Early life stress (ELS) due to neglect or abuse, has profound and lasting effects on adult neural function, contributing to various psychopathologies. Utilizing the well-established model of early life maternal separation (ELMS), this study investigated the impact of ELS on adult behavior. For the maternally separated (MS+) group, pups were separated from their mother for 3 hours from postnatal day 1 to 14, while control (stress naive) group pups remained in their home cages. Behavioral assessments from week 8-10 (young adults) revealed significant differences between MS+ and control mice. Bot

Social deficits play a role in numerous psychiatric, neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders. Relating complex behavior, such as social interaction, to brain activity remains one of the biggest goals and challenges in neuroscience. Availability of standardized behavioral tests that assess social preference is however, limited. Here, we present a novel behavioral set-up and paradigm that we developed to measure social behavior, the modified elevated gap interaction test (MEGIT). In this test, animals are placed on one of two elevated platforms separated by a gap, in which they can engage

The Insula functions as a multisensory relay involved in socio-emotional processing with projections to sensory, cognitive, emotional, and motivational regions. Notably, the interhemispheric projection from the Insula to the contralateral Insula is a robust yet underexplored connection. Using viral-based tracing neuroanatomy, ex vivo and in vivo electrophysiology along with targeted circuit manipulation, we elucidated the nature and role of InsulaIns communication in social and anxiety processing in mice. In this study, we 1) characterized the anatomical and molecular profile of the InsulaIns

Social behavior is defined as any communication or interaction between two conspecifics of a given species encompassing various forms and contexts. Previous studies have shown that mice have social cognition that enables them to integrate, interpret, and respond to social signals and use these signals for the guidance of flexible and appropriate responses in different social contexts. One brain region with established involvement in social cognition is the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). However, the exact role of the mPFC in social decision-making in different contexts remains poorly defined

Vaccinia-related kinase 2 (VRK2) VRK2 is one of the serine/threonine kinases that was originally identified in highly proliferative cells such as thymocytes and fetal liver cells. GWAS studies were reported that VRK2 was related molecule with neuropsychiatric diseases. And in vitro studies reported that VRK2 plays an important role in cell division and cell cycle regulation. However, little is known about the molecular mechanism and physiological function of VRK2 on the central nervous systems in vivo. In this study, we established vrk2 deficient (VRK2 KO) zebrafish and found that VRK2 KO body