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科学家揭示小鼠额叶皮层社会表征动态
作者:小柯机器人 发布时间:2019/11/26 15:26:17

以色列威兹曼科学研究所Ofer Yizhar研究团队发现小鼠前额叶皮层的社会表征动态。该研究11月25日在线发表于《自然—神经科学》。

研究人员表示自由行为的雄性小鼠的内侧PFC中的神经元优先响应与社会相关的嗅觉因素。该地区的人口活动模式在社会和非社会刺激之间有所不同,并和经历有关。

在缺乏自闭症相关基因Cntnap2的小鼠中,感觉刺激的分类和社会表征的完善性都受到损害。在Cntnap2基因敲除中,自发群体活动中的噪声水平较高,并且与社会表征的破坏程度相关。

这项发现阐明了内侧PFC中社交感觉因素的编码机制,并提供了改变的前额叶动力学与自闭症相关的社交功能障碍之间的联系。

据悉,前额叶皮层(PFC)在调节哺乳动物的社会功能中起重要作用,其功能障碍与神经发育障碍中的社会缺陷有关。关于PFC如何编码社交信息以及在这种疾病中社会表征如何发生变化,人们知之甚少。

附:英文原文

Title: Dynamics of social representation in the mouse prefrontal cortex

Author: Dana Rubi Levy, Tal Tamir, Maya Kaufman, Ana Parabucki, Aharon Weissbrod, Elad Schneidman, Ofer Yizhar

Issue&Volume: 2019-11-25

Abstract: The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays an important role in regulating social functions in mammals, and its dysfunction has been linked to social deficits in neurodevelopmental disorders. Yet little is known of how the PFC encodes social information and how social representations may be altered in such disorders. Here, we show that neurons in the medial PFC of freely behaving male mice preferentially respond to socially relevant olfactory cues. Population activity patterns in this region differed between social and nonsocial stimuli and underwent experience-dependent refinement. In mice lacking the autism-associated gene Cntnap2, both the categorization of sensory stimuli and the refinement of social representations were impaired. Noise levels in spontaneous population activity were higher in Cntnap2 knockouts and correlated with the degree to which social representations were disrupted. Our findings elucidate the encoding of social sensory cues in the medial PFC and provide a link between altered prefrontal dynamics and autism-associated social dysfunction.

DOI: 10.1038/s41593-019-0531-z

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-019-0531-z

期刊信息

Nature Neuroscience:《自然—神经科学》,创刊于1998年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团,最新if:21.126
官方网址:https://www.nature.com/neuro/
投稿链接:https://mts-nn.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex