Neurobiology of social behavior

作为一个社会群体的一部分，产生了需要专门的行为和神经生物学反应的需求。社会神经科学是一个新兴的、最近才被定义的领域，旨在理解社会行为的神经生物学基础。我和我的学生的研究项目将集中在哺乳动物社会行为认知方面的神经生物学。在社会行为的许多方面中，我们将特别强调那些需要高水平认知参与的方面。特别是，使用啮齿动物，我们将关注：(1)社会识别，识别个体的能力。这种特殊的学习形式对许多社会行为都有影响，从交配和社会偏好到识别和避免被寄生的个体。(2)社会学习，即个体从其他个体那里获得生物学上相关和适应性的信息，使个体能够避免通常与个体学习相关的成本。尽管它在许多物种中具有很高的适应性和共性，但目前对社会学习的神经生物学基础的理解非常有限。(3)社会反应，即动物面对同类时的行为反应。我们将通过综合使用行为学、药理学、神经生物学、分子和遗传学研究方法，继续研究各种神经化学系统在社会行为中的作用。识别为正常社会行为服务的神经和激素过程有助于开发异常社会行为的新疗法，从而帮助解决一些令人烦恼的人类疾病。其中包括自闭症谱系障碍、精神分裂症和分裂典型障碍、社交恐惧症和焦虑，以及过度攻击和暴力。此外，考虑到个体和社会学习在神经生物学上可能是不同的，今天对社会学习机制的最低限度的了解是评估各种药物（例如新药物和旧药物治疗）对学习和记忆的严重缺陷。我们的研究将有助于填补这一知识空白，并有助于推动加拿大社会神经科学的研究。

Being part of a social group creates needs that require specialized behavioral and neurobiological responses. The novel and recently defined field of social neuroscience aims at understanding the neurobiological bases of social behavior. My and my students' research program will focus on the neurobiology of cognitive aspects of social behavior in mammals. Among many facets of social behavior, we will place particular emphasis on those that require a high level of cognitive involvement. In particular, using rodents, we will focus on: (1) Social Recognition, the ability to recognize individuals. This specific form of learning has implications for a number of social behaviors, from mating and social preferences to the recognition and avoidance of parasitized individuals. (2) Social Learning, whereby an individual acquires biologically relevant and adaptive information from other individuals, allows one to avoid the costs often associated with individual learning. Despite its high adaptiveness and commonality in numerous species, the understanding of the neurobiological bases of social learning is, at present, extremely limited. (3) Social Reactivity, the behavioral responses of animals when in the presence of members of their own species. We will continue on going investigations on the role of various neurochemical systems in social behavior, through the integrative use of behavioral, pharmacological, neurobiological, molecular and genetic research methodologies. Identifying the neural and hormonal processes subserving normal social behavior could aid in the development of novel treatments of abnormal social behavior, thus helping several vexing human disorders. Among many, these include autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia and schizotypical disorders, social phobias and anxiety, as well as hyperaggression and violence. Furthermore, given that individual and social learning can be neurobiologically different, today's minimal knowledge of the mechanisms of social learning is a serious drawback for the evaluation of various agents (e.g. of new and old (!) drug therapies) on learning and memory. Our research will contribute to filling this gap in knowledge and help to advance research in social neuroscience in Canada.