The Female Songbird as a Novel Mechanistic Model for the Neural Basis of Social Evaluation

雌性鸣禽作为社会评价神经基础的新机制模型

• 批准号: 10472986
• 负责人: Vikram Gadagkar
• 金额: $ 148.05万
• 依托单位: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-15 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10472986
• 关键词: Address; Agnosia; Animals; Aphasia; Area; Auditory Perceptual Disorders; Award; Behavior; Behavioral; Biological Assay; Biological Models; Brain; Computational Technique; Computing Methodologies; Disease; Electrophysiology (science); Ethology; Evaluation; Evolution; Female; Individual; Judgment; Machine Learning; Modeling; Motor; Neurobiology; Neurodegenerative Disorders; Neurosciences; Pair Bond; Partner in relationship; Persons; Photometry; Posture; Production; Research; Signal Transduction; Social Behavior; Social Interaction; Songbirds; Stereotyping; System; Voice; artificial intelligence algorithm; autism spectrum disorder; base; bird song; court; innovation; insight; male; neglect; neural circuit; neural model; neuromechanism; novel; optogenetics; preference; relating to nervous system; response; sexual dimorphism; social; social deficits; stereotypy; trait; zebra finch

Project Summary In nearly every social interaction, we are constantly evaluating and making judgments about other people’s behaviors, such as their words, posture, or tone of voice. While neuroscience is making rapid progress on how the brain encodes one’s own behavior, little is known, in any model system, about how neural circuits evaluate another individual’s actions for proper social responses. Though an active area of research, neither has this problem been resolved by artificial intelligence algorithms. This lack of understanding presents a major obstacle to treating the large number of people with disorders of social evaluation, such as auditory processing disorders, aphasias, agnosias, autism spectrum disorder, and several neurodegenerative diseases. Here I propose the female songbird, which has evolved a specialized behavior and dedicated neural circuits to evaluate male song, as a novel mechanistic model for social evaluation. Mate choice is a prime example of social assessment, in which animals evaluate the quality of potential mates. Birdsong is one of the most quantifiable signals males use to court females, making the female songbird an ideal model for social evaluation. The male zebra finch is an excellent model in neuroscience because song is a highly stereotyped motor sequence and its brain contains a tractable song system dedicated to singing. While only males sing, females also possess a ‘song system’, required for perceiving song in several species of non-singing females. Thus, our overarching hypothesis is that the zebra finch song system has co-evolved for complementary sexually dimorphic traits: song production in males and song evaluation and preference in females. Female zebra finches prefer stereotyped over variable songs but evaluating stereotypy is not trivial; the brain must first form an internal representation of the suitor’s song, then rapidly compare features across renditions, before showing a preference for the most attractive songs. I propose studying the female songbird to address three fundamental questions: How does the brain encode an internal representation of others’ behavior? How does the brain evaluate the quality of others’ behavior? How does the brain show a preference for the most desirable behavior in others? Reflecting a larger bias toward males in neuroscience, songbird research has also primarily focused on song production in males, leaving the female brain, and the neural mechanisms of mate choice, largely neglected. For the New Innovator Award, I propose a unique melding of neurobiology, ethology, and evolution with state of the art behavioral (song preference assays, machine-learning based social behavior tracking), neural (photometry, optogenetics, multi-region electrophysiology), and computational methods to establish the female songbird as a mechanistic model for how we evaluate the actions of others. Such a cellular and circuit- level understanding will pave the way to decoding the neural circuits for mating, monogamy, and the pair bond, inform emerging artificial intelligence algorithms, and provide insights into disorders characterized by deficits in social interactions, such as aphasias, agnosias, and autism.

项目摘要 在几乎每一次社交互动中，我们都在不断地评估和判断别人的 言行举止，如他们的言语、姿势或语调。当神经科学在如何 大脑对自己的行为进行编码，在任何模型系统中，人们对神经回路如何评估知之甚少 另一个人的行为，以获得适当的社会反应。虽然这是一个活跃的研究领域，但这也不是 这个问题已经被人工智能算法解决了。这种缺乏理解是一个主要障碍。 为了治疗大量的社会评价障碍者，如听觉加工障碍， 失语症、失认症、自闭症谱系障碍和几种神经退行性疾病。 在这里，我推荐雌性鸣鸟，它进化出了一种特殊的行为和专注的神经 回路评价男声，作为一种新颖的社会评价机制模型。择偶是最重要的 社会评估的一个例子，动物对潜在配偶的质量进行评估。伯德桑是 雄性用来向雌性求爱的大多数可量化的信号，使雌性鸣鸟成为社交的理想模型 评估。雄性斑马雀是神经科学中的优秀模型，因为歌声是一种高度刻板的 运动序列及其大脑包含了一个致力于唱歌的易驾驭的歌曲系统。虽然只有雄性歌唱， 雌性也有一个“歌唱系统”，在几种不会唱歌的雌鸟身上，这是感知歌声所必需的。 因此，我们的主要假设是斑马雀的鸣叫系统是为了互补性而共同进化的。 二态特征：男性的歌曲产生和女性的歌曲评价和偏好。雌性斑马雀 喜欢刻板印象而不是可变的歌曲，但评估刻板印象并不是微不足道的；大脑必须首先形成一个内部 表示求婚者的歌曲，然后快速比较不同再现的特征，然后显示偏好 最吸引人的歌曲。我建议研究雌性鸣鸟来解决三个基本问题： 大脑如何对他人行为的内部表征进行编码？大脑是如何评估 其他人的行为质量？大脑如何表现出对他人最令人向往的行为的偏好？ 反映出神经科学中对雄性的更大偏见，鸣禽的研究也主要集中在 男性的歌声产生，离开女性的大脑，以及择偶的神经机制，很大程度上 被忽视了。对于新创新者奖，我提出了神经生物学、行为学和进化论的独特融合 具有最先进的行为(歌曲偏好分析、基于机器学习的社交行为跟踪)， 神经(光度学、光遗传学、多区域电生理学)和计算方法来建立 雌性鸣禽是我们如何评价他人行为的机械论模型。这样的蜂窝和电路- 水平理解将为破译交配、一夫一妻制和配对结合的神经电路铺平道路， 向新兴的人工智能算法提供信息，并提供对以 社会互动，如失语症、失认症和自闭症。