Parallel maturation of social behaviors and amygdala circuits

项目摘要 社会功能的成熟有一个关键的发展窗口。有害的社会经历 在这段时间里，可能会产生终身的社会障碍，并导致精神疾病。这可能是由于 社会环境对参与复杂社会活动的关键大脑区域发育的影响 行为，如杏仁核。我们研究的长期目标是了解社会 发育过程中的经历塑造了杏仁核和相互连接的区域的功能，以及它们是如何形成的。 这些回路的功能障碍会导致社交障碍。社会功能需要平衡 在模糊的社会情境中，有从事社会行为的动力和正常的社会谨慎。短期 这些实验的目的是测试社会驱动和社会谨慎之间的平衡是否会改变 在发育过程中，内侧杏仁核（MeA）功能是否是这种平衡的基础， 社会发展的中断损害了MeA功能的这种平衡。这个项目将测试这个假设 青春期前的社会谨慎性较低，MeA向大脑的输出不成熟 社会谨慎的地区。社会驱动力和社会谨慎之间的平衡是敏感的， 社会条件。这个项目也将测试促进社会驱动的条件激活的假设 MeA输出到促进社会行为的大脑区域，社会驱动力和 社会谨慎被有害的社会发展经验所破坏。该项目的目的是 确定在整个发展过程中，社会功能是否从社会驱动转向社会谨慎， 产出路径之间的平衡在发展过程中发生变化，如果社会发展受到破坏， 破坏了社会驱动力和谨慎之间的平衡。本项目将比较 调节不同年龄的MeA活动和社会行为。这个项目意义重大，因为它可以揭示一个 新的神经生物学机制的差异，在平衡的社会驱动力和社会焦虑， 年龄，以及有害的社会经验对社会神经基质的影响的新机制。 行为。这些实验是创新的，因为它们将检验杏仁核发育的作用 在一个新的功能框架下的社会行为。这种方法将产生令人兴奋的新 关于与MeA回路发展并行的社会行为发展的信息。这 项目将导致对社会发展的新见解，以及社会经验如何产生社会 戒断和焦虑是几种精神疾病的主要症状。

Project Summary There is a critical developmental window for maturation of social functioning. Harmful social experiences during this time can produce life-long social impairments, and contribute to mental illness. This may be due to effects of the social environment on the development of key brain regions involved in complex social behaviors, such as the amygdala. The long-term goal of our research is to understand how social experience during development shapes the function of the amygdala and interconnected regions, and how dysfunction in these circuits produces social impairments. Social function requires a balance between the drive to engage in social behaviors and normal social caution in ambiguous social situations. The short-term goal of these experiments is to test whether the balance between social drive and social caution changes during development, whether medial amygdala (MeA) function underlies this balance, and whether disruption of social development impairs this balance of MeA function. This project will test the hypothesis that there is lower social caution during the prepubertal period and immaturity of MeA outputs to brain regions that engage social caution. The balance between social drive and social caution is sensitive to social conditions. This project will also test the hypothesis that conditions that promote social drive activate MeA outputs to brain regions that promote social behaviors, and that the balance between social drive and social caution is disrupted by harmful developmental social experience. The Aims of this project are to determine if social function shifts from social drive towards social caution across development, if the balance between MeA output paths shift across development, and if disruption of social development impairs the balance between social drive and caution. This project will compare the mechanisms that regulate MeA activity and social behavior across age. This project is significant because it can uncover a novel neurobiological mechanism for differences in the balance of social drive and social anxiety across age, and novel mechanisms for the effects of harmful social experience on the neural substrates of social behaviors. These experiments are innovative because they will examine the role of amygdala development in social behavior in the context of a new functional framework. This approach will yield exciting new information about the development of social behavior in parallel with the development of MeA circuits. This project will lead to novel insight about social development, and how social experience can produce social withdrawal and anxiety, major symptoms in several mental illnesses.