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 在这段时间内可能会产生终生的社会障碍，并导致精神疾病。这可能是由于 社会环境对复杂社会中关键脑区发育的影响 行为，如杏仁核。我们研究的长期目标是了解社会 发育过程中的经验塑造了杏仁核和相互关联的区域的功能，以及如何 这些回路的功能障碍会产生社会功能障碍。社会职能需要在以下两方面取得平衡 在模棱两可的社交场合下，主动参与社交行为，保持正常的社交谨慎。短期内 这些实验的目的是测试社交动力和社交谨慎之间的平衡是否会发生变化 在发育过程中，杏仁内侧核(Mea)的功能是否构成这种平衡的基础，以及 社会发展的中断破坏了这一自我功能的平衡。这个项目将检验这一假说 在青春期前和MEA对大脑的输出不成熟期间，社交谨慎程度较低 对社会保持谨慎的地区。社会动力和社会谨慎之间的平衡是敏感的 社会条件。该项目还将测试这样一种假设，即促进社会动力的条件被激活 MEA输出到促进社会行为的大脑区域，社会动力和社会动力之间的平衡 社会谨慎会被有害的发展性社会经验所破坏。这个项目的目的是 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，如果 中等收入国家产出路径之间的平衡在发展中转移，如果社会发展中断 破坏了社交动力和谨慎之间的平衡。该项目将比较 在不同年龄段规范我的活动和社会行为。这个项目意义重大，因为它可以揭示一个 社交动力和社交焦虑平衡性差异的新神经生物学机制 年龄，以及有害的社会经验对社会的神经基础的影响的新机制 行为。这些实验具有创新性，因为它们将检验杏仁核发育的作用。 在社会行为背景下的一个新的功能框架。这种方法将产生令人兴奋的新的 关于社会行为发展的信息，与Mea回路的发展同步。这 该项目将导致对社会发展以及社会体验如何产生社会的新见解 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.