Institute of Neuroscience and State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China.
The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, The Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam 1019 RG, The Netherlands.
Trends Neurosci. 2014 Nov;37(11):674-82. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2014.07.005. Epub 2014 Aug 24.
Hierarchical social status greatly influences behavior and health. Human and animal studies have begun to identify the brain regions that are activated during the formation of social hierarchies. They point towards the prefrontal cortex (PFC) as a central regulator, with brain areas upstream of the PFC conveying information about social status, and downstream brain regions executing dominance behavior. This review summarizes our current knowledge on the neural circuits that control social status. We discuss how the neural mechanisms for various types of dominance behavior can be studied in laboratory rodents by selective manipulation of neuronal activity or synaptic plasticity. These studies may help in finding the cause of social stress-related mental and physical health problems.
层级社会地位对行为和健康有重大影响。人类和动物研究已经开始确定在社会等级形成过程中被激活的大脑区域。它们指出前额叶皮层（PFC）是一个中央调节器，PFC 上游的大脑区域传递有关社会地位的信息，而下游的大脑区域则执行支配行为。这篇综述总结了我们目前对控制社会地位的神经回路的了解。我们讨论了如何通过选择性地操纵神经元活动或突触可塑性来研究实验室啮齿动物的各种类型的支配行为的神经机制。这些研究可能有助于找到与社会压力相关的心理健康和身体健康问题的原因。
