Neural and Molecular Substrates of Social Competence

社会性动物具有复杂的认知能力，可以评估，评估和回应广泛的社会线索。这些社会能力允许个体根据他们的社会地位和互动表现出灵活的行为，这被称为社会能力。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。了解反应是如何调节的，将提供对社会反应的基本理解，包括典型的和非典型的，并最终允许对个人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，非洲慈鲷鱼，Astatolipia burtoni。这些鱼具有高度的社会性，并显示出非凡的认知能力，甚至可以使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等级。这项研究将为培养神经科学的本科生和研究生提供机会，并为他们在科学领域的职业生涯和向公众推广做好准备。这项研究的具体目标是确定慈鲷鱼的神经回路，分子信号和参与社会能力的调节机制。 该提案假设多巴胺通过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特性中起着特别重要的作用，并且已知其调节有动机的、目标导向的行为。研究人员整合了行为，神经解剖学，药理学和基因组学方法来发现（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新连接神经回路;（3）多巴胺能通路的操纵如何控制行为灵活性;（4）社会信息和多巴胺能系统如何相互作用以影响基因组活动。到目前为止，研究结果表明，不仅个体对社会刺激的反应不同，这取决于社会背景，但操纵多巴胺能奖励系统的行为效应也因环境而异。鉴于所有脊椎动物中控制社会行为的神经网络都非常保守，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应对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.