CAREER: Early-life social environments drive behavioral and neural mechanisms of development

个人的经历塑造了他们，特别是那些发生在生命早期的经历。尽管这些社会效应的发生是众所周知的，但社会环境是复杂的，而且对社会经验的哪些特定属性实际上会导致大脑和行为的变化知之甚少。该项目通过识别早期生活社会环境的因果因素，并揭示与对个体的强烈，长期影响的联系，填补了跨物种存在的知识空白。这个项目使用一种高度社会化的鱼作为模型系统。它设计并详细检查了幼鱼发育过程中的各种社会经验，扩大了我们对群体生活丰富性的理解，并确定了社会经验对大脑，激素和行为的影响。考虑到社会效应对包括人类在内的所有脊椎动物都有显著的影响，研究结果对整个生命过程中所经历的社会环境如何塑造个体从行为到健康都有深远的影响。该项目通过对从高中到学士后的青年科学家进行尖端的跨学科培训，并在区域和国家会议上进行专业发展，扩大世卫组织对这一领域知识创造的贡献。将这项研究带入课堂，促进了科学专业和非科学专业学生的科学素养，并增加了对行为，激素和大脑知识的获取，有助于发展一个知情，健康和参与的美国公众。早期生活的社会环境是发育可塑性的强大启动器，由此产生的变化往往是持久的，甚至是永久的，可以促进局部适应的表型。由于青少年经常花费大量时间与他人互动和观察他人，因此社会刺激在早期环境中是最有影响力的。互动的数量、质量和多样性以及社会感官线索的感知在发展过程中积累，形成社会经验。本研究的目的是揭示行为机制-社会经验的因果属性-通过潜在的神经和神经内分泌机制的持续变化来塑造行为表型。该项目使用高度社会和发育可塑性的非洲慈鲷鱼，伯顿的Mouthbrooder（Astatolipia burtoni），以测试如何在早期生活的社会经验的个体差异形状的行为表型通过可塑性在神经内分泌应激轴和精氨酸加压素信号。本研究采用综合的方法，揭示了1）社会经验的复杂性，包括在早期生活中与更多新的社会伙伴直接互动的结果; 2）加压素神经元群和糖皮质激素受体（共）表达的发展;和3）行为的，内分泌的，和神经转录组学对社会群体成员的急性社会经验的反应。该项目由行为系统集群和神经系统集群联合资助该奖项反映了NSF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。

Individuals are shaped by the experiences they have, particularly those that occur early in life. Although these social effects are well known to occur, social environments are complex, and strikingly little is known about which specific attributes of social experience actually cause changes in brain and behavior. This project fills a gap in knowledge that exists across species by identifying the causal elements of early-life social environments and uncovering the connections to the strong, long-term effects on the individual. This project uses a highly social fish as a model system. It engineers and examines a variety of social experiences in detail as young fish develop, expanding our understanding of the richness of living in groups, and it identifies consequences of social experience for the brain, hormones, and behavior. Given that social effects are remarkably influential across all vertebrates, including humans, the results have far-reaching implications for how social environments experienced throughout life shape individuals into who they are—from behavior to health. This project expands who contributes to knowledge-creation in this field through cutting-edge, interdisciplinary training of young scientists, from high school to postbaccalaureate, and professional development at regional and national conferences. Bringing this research into the classroom promotes scientific literacy among science majors and non-science majors, and increased access to knowledge about behavior, hormones, and the brain contributes to the development of an informed, healthy, and engaged American public. Early-life social environments are powerful initiators of developmental plasticity, and the resulting changes are often long-lasting, or even permanent, and can facilitate locally adapted phenotypes. Because juveniles often spend a substantial portion of their time interacting with and observing others, social stimuli are among the most influential in the early environment. The quantity, quality, and diversity of interactions and social sensory cues perceived accrue over development to form social experience. The objective of this research is to uncover the behavioral mechanisms—the causal attributes of social experience—that shape behavioral phenotype via persistent changes in underlying neural and neuroendocrine mechanisms. This project uses the highly social and developmentally plastic African cichlid fish, Burton’s Mouthbrooder (Astatotilapia burtoni), to test how individual variation in early-life social experience shapes behavioral phenotype via plasticity in neuroendocrine stress axis and arginine vasopressin signaling. Using an integrative approach, this research reveals 1) the complexity of social experience, including as a result of direct interactions with more novel social partners in early life; 2) the development of vasopressin neuronal populations and glucocorticoid receptor (co)expression; and 3) the behavioral, endocrine, and neurotranscriptomic responses to an acute social experience across members of a social group.This project is jointly funded by the Behavioral Systems Cluster and Neural Systems Cluster in the Division of Integrative and Organismal Systems.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.