Social control of behavioural and neural plasticity

社会地位是哺乳动物生殖行为的关键调节因素。我的研究调查了社会互动与男性和女性之间不同的神经回路和行为之间的关系。为了做到这一点，我研究了社会地位如何影响裸鼠参与繁殖的大脑区域。这些动物生活在大型的社会群体中，繁殖仅限于一只雌性和1-3只雄性；这些繁殖者在社会上支配着所有其他动物，称为从属动物。通过比较雄性和雌性下属和饲养者的大脑，我已经证明，与大多数其他哺乳动物物种相比，社会地位比性别更重要，才能决定这些独特的社会性动物大脑的形态和蛋白质表达。重要的是，任何下属如果离开它们的蜂群并与异性伴侣配对，都可以成为繁殖者。因为我随机选择动物来保持从属地位或成为饲养者，我的工作表明，主导动物和从属动物之间的差异是社会地位变化的结果，而不是由于使动物倾向于特定地位的预先存在的神经差异。这项拟议中的研究将扩展这些发现，以确定社会地位变化的哪些特征导致了相关的神经可塑性(例如，从压力环境中移除与与新伴侣相关的积极线索)。此外，我们将通过操纵特定的荷尔蒙和多肽来开始展示与社会地位相关的大脑变化的功能意义，看看我们是否可以使从属大脑像繁殖者大脑一样运作，反之亦然。最终，我的工作揭示了社会因素如何影响哺乳动物大脑的发育和可塑性，进而揭示了专门的神经回路如何控制社会行为的表达。

Social status is a key regulator of reproductive behaviour in mammals. My research investigates the relationship between social interactions and those neural circuits and behaviours that differ between males and females. To do this, I study how social status influences brain areas involved in reproduction in the naked mole-rat. These animals live in large social colonies where reproduction is limited to a single female and 1-3 males; these breeders are socially dominant over all other animals, called subordinates. By comparing the brains of male and female subordinates and breeders, I have demonstrated that, in contrast to most other mammalian species, social status is more important than sex for determining morphology and protein expression in the brains of these uniquely social animals. Importantly, any subordinate can become a breeder if removed from their colony and paired with an opposite sex mate. Because I randomly select animals to remain subordinate or become breeders, my work demonstrates that differences between dominant and subordinate animals are the result of the change in social status and not due to pre-existing neural differences that predispose animals to a particular status. The proposed research will extend on these findings to determine which features of a change in social status are causing the associated neuroplasticity (e.g., removal from a stressful environment vs. the positive cues associated with a new mate). Furthermore, we will begin to demonstrate the functional significance of brain changes associated with social status by manipulating particular hormones and peptides to see if we can cause a subordinate brain to function like a breeder brain and vice versa. Ultimately, my work reveals how social factors affect development and plasticity in the mammalian brain and, in turn, how specialized neural circuits control the expression of social behaviours.