DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Probing the Social Interactome: How Social Network Position Affects Physiology and Behavior

包括人类在内的群居动物互动频繁，可以通过多种方式相互影响。例如，长期研究发现，衡量人类健康的指标，如肥胖、戒烟和抑郁，在一定程度上可以通过社会关系来预测。为了了解这些同伴效应是如何在社会网络中传播的，研究人员将使用受社会环境和社会伙伴行为强烈影响的高度社会性鱼作为模型系统。该研究项目将密切监测社会群体，并操纵每个群体中的一个个体，以确定一个个体的行为变化如何影响其他群体成员的行为、激素和神经分子反应。研究结果将有助于更好地理解这些社会网络效应的机制基础，从而改善社会群体的健康状况。这项工作还将通过课堂访问为中学生、在实验室实习的高中生和渴望参与分子和行为研究的本科生提供出色的机会。这些学生将主要从鼓励弱势群体参与科学的项目中招募。最后，这个项目的结果将通过媒体采访和公开演讲以及正在进行的儿童暑期科学项目进行交流。在自然社会群体中，非洲的青鳉鱼（Astatotilapia burtoni）为研究个体对彼此的生理、神经基因组状态和行为的影响提供了一个独特的易于处理的系统。研究人员开发了一个描述性统计框架来研究该系统中的社区动态。在实验中，使用雌激素受体激动剂，每组中一个雄性的攻击性会增加，而雌激素受体激动剂已经被证明会导致攻击性增加大约两倍。这些被操纵的群体将被观察，并与对照治疗进行比较，以确定一个男性的行为变化如何在整个社会网络中连锁反应，影响其他群体成员的行为。研究人员将收集血液和大脑样本，以确定这些社交网络的干扰如何影响性类固醇激素水平，以及社会群体成员大脑关键区域对这些激素的敏感性。这些实验将为社会网络效应背后的生理、神经内分泌和行为机制提供因果见解。

Social animals, including humans, interact frequently and can affect each other in numerous ways. For example, long-term studies have found that measures of human health such as obesity, smoking cessation, and depression can in part be predicted by social relationships. In order to understand how these peer effects spread through a social network, the researchers will use a highly social fish that is strongly affected by social environment and the behavior of social partners as model system. This research project will closely monitor social groups and manipulate one individual within each group to determine how changes in the behavior of one individual affect the behavior, hormones, and neuromolecular responses of the other group members. The results will provide a better understanding of the mechanistic basis of these social network effects that can be harnessed to improve the health of social groups. This work will also provide outstanding opportunities for middle school students through class room visits, high school seniors who are interns in the laboratory, and undergraduate students who desire to become involved in the molecular and behavioral research. These students will be primarily recruited from programs that encourage the participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences. Finally, results of this project will be communicated through media interviews and public presentations and in an on-going children's summer science program. The African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, offers a uniquely tractable system for investigating the effects that individuals have on each other's physiology, neurogenomic state and behavior within naturalistic social communities. The researchers have developed a descriptive statistical framework for studying community dynamics in this system. The aggression of one male in each group will be experimentally increased using an estrogen receptor agonist which has been previously shown to cause an approximately two-fold increase in aggression. These manipulated communities will be observed and compared to control treatments to determine how the change in behavior of one male cascades throughout the social network to affect the behavior of the other group members. Blood and brain samples will be collected to determine how these social network perturbations affect sex steroid hormone levels and sensitivity to those hormones in key areas of the brain of members of the social group. These experiments will give causal insights into the physiological, neuroendocrine and behavioral mechanisms underlying social network effects.