RUI: Neurobiology of seasonal sociality in voles

为什么有些物种生活在大群体中，而另一些物种只为了繁殖而相互作用？ 该项目研究哺乳动物社会行为变异的神经来源，包括支持与他人互动的动机和社会宽容的途径。关于社会依恋的神经生物学知识大多来自于对母性和一夫一妻制的研究，而对非生殖关系的了解甚少。这个项目的目标是研究荷尔蒙催产素在大脑中的作用部位以及如何影响同龄人之间的社会行为。 这是接近与行为，药理学和分子遗传学研究草甸田鼠。草原田鼠在社会行为上表现出环境诱导的变化，在夏季表现出攻击性和领土性，但在冬季生活在社会群体中。 这些实验将研究神经化学的季节性变化，特别是催产素回路的季节性变化，是焦虑、社会容忍和社会依恋变化的基础。这填补了我们对社会关系理解的空白，增加了对非生殖性同伴关系的研究，并为催产素如何在不同的大脑区域促进亲社会和反社会行为提供了重要的基本信息。这些发现将对理解社会性物种的社会性，特别是哺乳动物的社会性产生影响。 这些研究将在一所女子学院进行，为女大学生提供培训机会，其中许多人来自代表性不足的群体。 学生将担任领导角色，并参与这项研究的各个方面，包括工作的演示和出版。来自这些研究的解剖学和基因组数据将贡献给在线存储库（Data Dryad和GenBank），定制软件将通过实验室网站提供

Why do some species live in large groups while others interact only to reproduce? This project investigates neural sources of variation in mammalian social behavior, including pathways that support motivation to interact with others and social tolerance. Most of what is known about the neurobiology of social attachments comes from research on mothering and monogamy, while little is known about non-reproductive relationships. The goal of this project is to examine where and how the hormone oxytocin acts in the brain to influence social behavior between peers. This is approached with behavioral, pharmacological, and molecular genetic studies of meadow voles. Meadow voles display environmentally induced variation in social behavior, acting aggressive and territorial in summer months, but living in social groups in winter. These experiments will investigate how seasonal changes in neurochemistry, particularly in oxytocin circuitry, underlie changing anxiety, social tolerance, and social attachments. This fills a gap in our understanding of social relationships by adding the study of non-reproductive peer relationships, and contributes important basic information on how oxytocin contributes to both prosocial and antisocial behaviors in different brain regions. These findings will have implications for understanding sociality across social species, particularly in mammals. These studies will be conducted at a women's college, providing training opportunities for undergraduate women, many from under-represented groups. Students will serve in leadership roles and participate in all aspects of this research including presentation and publication of work. Anatomical and genomic data from these studies will be contributed to online repositories (Data Dryad and GenBank), and custom software will be made available through the lab website