Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Horm Behav. 2012 Mar;61(3):251-8. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.01.012. Epub 2012 Jan 28.
For most people, their quality of life depends on their successful interdependence with others, which requires sophisticated social cognition, communication, and emotional bonds. Across the lifespan, new bonds must be forged and maintained, and conspecific menaces must be managed. The dynamic nature of the human social landscape suggests ongoing specific alterations in neural circuitry across several brain systems to subserve social behavior. To discover the biological mechanisms that contribute to normal social activities, animal models of social behavior have been developed. One valuable model system has been female rat sexual behavior, which is governed by cyclic variation of ovarian hormones. This behavior is modulated by the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) through its actions in the hypothalamic ventromedial nucleus (VMH). The fluctuation of this behavior is associated with dendrite remodeling, like several other examples of behavioral plasticity. This review compares hormone-induced plasticity in the VMH with other examples of dendrite plasticity across the mammalian nervous system, namely the neurobehavioral paradigms of environmental enrichment, chronic stress, and incentive sensitization, which affect the neocortex, hippocampal formation, and ventral striatum, respectively. This comparison suggests that the effects of ovarian hormones on VMH neurons in rats, given the simple dendritic arbor and short time course for dendrite remodeling, provide a dual opportunity for mechanistic and functional studies that will shed light on i) the neural actions of OT that regulate social behavior and, ii) behaviorally relevant dendrite regulation in a variety of brain structures. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Oxytocin, Vasopressin, and Social Behavior.
对于大多数人来说，他们的生活质量取决于他们与他人成功的相互依存关系，这需要复杂的社会认知、沟通和情感纽带。在整个生命周期中，必须建立和维持新的联系，并管理同类的威胁。人类社会景观的动态性质表明，几个大脑系统中的神经回路需要不断进行特定的改变，以支持社交行为。为了发现促进正常社交活动的生物学机制，已经开发了动物社交行为模型。一个有价值的模型系统是雌性大鼠的性行为，它受卵巢激素的周期性变化控制。这种行为通过下丘脑腹内侧核（VMH）中的神经肽催产素（OT）的作用来调节。这种行为的波动与树突重塑有关，就像其他几种行为可塑性的例子一样。这篇综述将 VMH 中激素诱导的可塑性与哺乳动物神经系统中其他树突可塑性的例子进行了比较，即环境富集、慢性应激和激励敏感化的神经行为范例，分别影响大脑皮层、海马结构和腹侧纹状体。这种比较表明，鉴于 VMH 神经元的树突分支简单且树突重塑的时间过程较短，卵巢激素对大鼠 VMH 神经元的影响为研究 OT 调节社交行为的神经作用以及各种大脑结构中与行为相关的树突调节提供了双重机会。本文是一个特刊的一部分，主题是催产素、加压素和社交行为。
