Somatosensory cortex in affective social relationships

描述(申请人提供)：灵长类动物之间的社会关系包括关系中个人之间广泛的身体接触。寻求与与之建立了牢固关系的个人接触的倾向在南美蒂蒂猴身上得到了极端的体现。这些一夫一妻制的灵长类动物每天有高达90%的时间与家庭中的其他成员进行身体接触。家庭成员之间的大部分接触都是被动的--动物们并排坐着，侧面与另一只猴子亲密接触。这种社交联系的一个独特方面是尾巴缠绕。当动物被动地坐着时，它们会横向摆动尾巴，直到尾巴接触到另一只动物的尾巴，然后尾巴紧紧地缠住另一只动物。当多只动物坐在一起时，它们会把所有的尾巴缠成一条尾线。蒂蒂猴之间的主动接触包括梳理毛发，抓住一只手臂将相邻的动物拉得更近，用鼻子轻抚另一群动物的胸部或嘴，对于雄性猴子，在交配时用双手紧握雌性猴子的臀部。 这项拟议的研究将考察几个我们认为与表达和维持情感社会关系有关的体感皮质区域的作用。我们将使用多单位记录技术和神经解剖学追踪技术来研究顶叶皮质前部和后部躯体感觉区的信息处理和功能组织。我们预计，与其他灵长类动物相比，与社会接触有关的身体部位的表现将被放大。我们将使用抽吸技术，选择性地损害来自成熟社会群体的动物的不同皮质区。然后，我们将监测与失去其中特定领域或身体部位代表性相关的社会行为和社会动机的变化。这些研究的独特之处在于，他们利用由躯体感觉系统直接调节的公开行为来检查涉及离散社会互动的皮质机制的作用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Social relationships among primates include extensive physical contact between individual members of the relationship. The propensity to seek contact with individuals with which a strong relationship has been established is exemplified in the extreme by the South American titi monkey. These monogamous primates spend up to 90% of their day in physical contact with other members of their family group. Much of the contact between family members is passive -animals sit side-by-side with their lateral surface in close contact with another monkey. A unique aspect of this social contact is tail-twining. As animals sit in passive contact, they swing their tails laterally until it contacts the other animal's tail and then the tails tightly wrap around one another. When multiple animals are sitting together they wrap all of their tails in a single tail- twine. Active contact between titi monkeys includes grooming, grasping an arm to pull adjacent animals closer, nuzzling the chest or mouth of another group member, and, for males, bimanual clasping of the female's haunches during copulation. The proposed research will examine the role of several somatosensory cortical areas we believe are involved in the expression and maintenance of affective social relationships. We will examine information processing and the functional organization of somatosensory areas in anterior and posterior parietal cortex using multiunit recording techniques and neuroanatomical tracing techniques. We expect that representation of body parts, involved in social contact, will be magnified compared to other primates. We will selectively lesion, using aspiration techniques, different cortical fields in animals from well-established social groups. We will then monitor changes in social behavior and social motivation associated with the loss of a specific field or body part representation therein. These studies are unique in that they take advantage of an overt behavior, directly mediated by the somatosensory system, to examine the role of cortical mechanisms involved in discrete social interactions.