NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020: Friend or foe: Neural regulation of dynamic social environments

该行动资助了NSF 2020财年生物学博士后研究奖学金，研究基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该奖学金支持将以创新方式对生活规则领域作出贡献的研究员的研究和培训。社会行为是复杂的，个体必须利用来自不断变化的环境的外部信息来表现出适当的行为反应。然后将外部社会信息应用到当前的社会环境中。因此，行为反应取决于具体情况。这种反应依赖也必须通过大脑中可预测的模式来反映。这项研究旨在揭示神经（神经系统）活动如何以一种社会和环境敏感的方式协调行为。这项工作将扩大我们对基本社会行为如何在大脑内协调的理解，同时也为未被充分代表的少数民族的本科生和高中生提供研究培训的机会。本研究以罪犯鲷（Amatitlania nigrofasciata）为研究对象，建立了社会决策网络中脑区，特别是对社会信息敏感的脑区和编码奖励的脑区之间可预测的相互作用促进社会行为的生命规律。罪犯慈鲷非常适合解决这一假设，因为这个物种表现出配对结合和亲代照顾，这两种行为组合同时包含攻击性和附属性元素。父母提供和保护卵子，配偶通过亲密的展示来加强它们的联系，同时也保护配偶免受同种昆虫的伤害。不同的和共同的行为表现，发生在行为套件内部和之间，是如何在大脑中调节的？本研究通过荧光原位杂交（catFISH）对时间活动进行了隔室分析，以比较四种情况下暂时孤立的社会刺激事件的神经元反应，这些情况发生在行为组内部和行为组之间：（1a）亲代照顾（提供幼崽与保护幼崽）和（1b）配偶结合（配偶关系与保护配偶），其次，比较发生在不同行为组中的类似行为表现（类似行为表现）。1 c)。幼崽供应与配偶关系（附属行为），以及（1d.）幼崽保护与配偶保护（攻击行为）。最后，大脑区域将被解剖出来，行为活跃的神经元将被标记，并使用核糖体捕获（PhosphoTRAP）选择性地检索，以揭示神经元在响应每个独立刺激时的基因组特征。因此，通过整合神经回路和基因组学，这项工作将进一步加深我们对大脑-行为关系的理解。该项目的影响将扩大，包括高中和本科生在研究中代表性不足的群体。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of life in innovative ways. Social behavior is complex, individuals must use external information from a continually changing environment in order to display appropriate behavioral responses. The external social information is then applied within the current social context. Behavioral responses are thus dependent on the situation. This response dependency must also be reflected by predictable patterns within the brain. This research aims to uncover how neural (nervous system) activity orchestrates behavior in a socially and environmentally sensitive way. This work will broaden our understanding of how fundamental social behaviors are coordinated within the brain, while also providing opportunities in research training for undergraduates and high school students of underrepresented minorities.This research utilizes the convict cichlid (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) as a study system to establish the rule of life that social behavior is facilitated by predictable interactions of brain areas within the Social Decision-Making Network, specifically those sensitive to social information and those encoding reward. The convict cichlid is ideally suited to address this hypothesis, as this species displays pair bonding and parental care, two behavioral suites which contain both aggressive and affiliative elements. Parents both provision and guard eggs, and mated pairs reinforce their bond through affiliative displays, while also guarding mates against conspecifics. How are both distinct and shared behavioral displays, occurring within and across behavioral suites, regulated within the brain? This research implements compartment analysis of temporal activity by fluorescent in situ hybridization (catFISH) to compare the neuronal response of temporally isolated social stimulus events across four comparisons, within and across behavioral suites: (1a.) parental care (brood provision vs. brood guarding) and 1b.) pair bonding (mate affiliation vs. mate guarding), and second, compares similar behavioral displays, which occur in distinct behavioral suites (similar behavioral displays). 1c.) Brood provisioning vs. mate affiliation (affiliative behavior), and (1d.) brood guarding vs. mate guarding (aggressive behavior). Finally, brain regions will be dissected out and behaviorally active neurons will be tagged and selectively retrieved using ribosomal capture (PhosphoTRAP), in order to uncover the genomic signatures of neurons active in response to each independent stimulus. Hence, through integrating neural circuitry and genomics, this work will further our understating of brain-behavior relationships. The impact of the project will be broadened by involving high school and undergraduate students from underrepresented groups in the research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.