Neural and Molecular Substrates of Social Competence

社会性动物拥有复杂的认知能力，能够评估、评价和回应各种各样的社会暗示。这些社会能力使个人能够根据自己的社会地位和互动表现出灵活的行为，这就是所谓的社会能力。尽管对社会能力的重要性有详细的了解，但对调节这种能力的神经和分子机制知之甚少。了解反应是如何被调节的，将提供对典型和非典型社会反应的基本理解，并最终允许对个体的具体反应进行预测。这项研究使用了一个有趣的模型系统来解决这些问题——非洲慈鲷，波托尼Astatotilapia。这些鱼是高度社会化的，表现出非凡的认知能力，甚至可以用已知的关系来推断未知的关系，从而推断其他个体的社会地位。这项研究将为培养神经科学方面的本科生和研究生提供机会，并为他们从事科学事业和向公众宣传做好准备。本研究以慈鲷为研究对象，探讨与社会能力相关的神经回路、分子信号和调控机制。该建议假设多巴胺通过D2受体介导神经社会网络增强社会能力。多巴胺在编码社会刺激的奖励属性方面起着特别重要的作用，并调节动机，目标导向的行为。研究人员将行为学、神经解剖学、药理学和基因组学方法结合起来，发现(1)动物如何对微妙的社会信息做出反应；(2)社会信息如何在短时间内重塑神经回路；(3)多巴胺能通路调控行为灵活性的机制；(4)社会信息和多巴胺能系统如何相互作用影响基因组活性。到目前为止，研究结果表明，不仅个体对社会刺激的反应会因社会环境而异，而且操纵多巴胺能奖励系统的行为效果也会因环境而异。考虑到控制社会行为的神经网络在所有脊椎动物中都是非常保守的，计划中的研究结果将对包括人类在内的社会动物的大脑如何感知和响应其社会环境产生深远的影响。

Social animals possess sophisticated cognitive abilities for assessing, evaluating, and responding to a wide range of social cues. These social abilities allow individuals to display flexible behavior based on their social status and interactions, which is known as social competence. Despite the detailed understanding of importance of social competence little is known about the mechanisms, neural and molecular, that regulate this ability. Knowledge of how responses are regulated will provide essential understanding of social response, both typical and atypical, and allow ultimately for predictions about specific responses by individuals. The research uses an interesting model system to address these questions the African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni. These fish are highly social and display extraordinary cognitive abilities, and can even use known relationships to deduce unknown ones to infer the social rank of other individuals transitively. This research will provide opportunities to train undergraduate and graduate students in neuroscience and prepare them for careers in science and outreach to the general public.The specific goal of this research is cichlid fish to identify the neural circuitry, molecular signaling, and regulatory mechanisms involved in social competence. The proposal hypothesizes that dopamine acting through the D2 receptor mediates the neural social network potentiating social competence. Dopamine plays a particularly important role in encoding the rewarding properties of social stimuli and is known to modulate motivated, goal-directed behavior. The researchers integrate behavioral, neuroanatomical, pharmacological and genomic approaches to discover (1) how animals behave in response to subtle social information; (2) how social information rewires neural circuits on a short time scale; (3) how manipulation of the dopaminergic pathway governs behavioral flexibility; and (4) how social information and the dopaminergic system interact to affect genome activity. The results thus far suggest that not only do individuals respond to a social stimulus differently depending on the social context, but that the behavioral effects of manipulating the dopaminergic reward system also differ across contexts. Given that the neural networks governing social behavior are remarkably conserved across all vertebrates, the results of the planned research will have far-reaching implications for how the brains of social animals, including humans, perceive and respond to their social environment.