Kim Yongsoo, Venkataraju Kannan Umadevi, Pradhan Kith, Mende Carolin, Taranda Julian, Turaga Srinivas C, Arganda-Carreras Ignacio, Ng Lydia, Hawrylycz Michael J, Rockland Kathleen S, Seung H Sebastian, Osten Pavel
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA 02139, USA.
Cell Rep. 2015 Jan 13;10(2):292-305. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2014.12.014. Epub 2014 Dec 31.
Understanding how brain activation mediates behaviors is a central goal of systems neuroscience. Here, we apply an automated method for mapping brain activation in the mouse in order to probe how sex-specific social behaviors are represented in the male brain. Our method uses the immediate-early-gene c-fos, a marker of neuronal activation, visualized by serial two-photon tomography: the c-fos-GFP+ neurons are computationally detected, their distribution is registered to a reference brain and a brain atlas, and their numbers are analyzed by statistical tests. Our results reveal distinct and shared female and male interaction-evoked patterns of male brain activation representing sex discrimination and social recognition. We also identify brain regions whose degree of activity correlates to specific features of social behaviors and estimate the total numbers and the densities of activated neurons per brain areas. Our study opens the door to automated screening of behavior-evoked brain activation in the mouse.
理解大脑激活如何介导行为是系统神经科学的核心目标。在此，我们应用一种自动方法来绘制小鼠大脑激活图，以探究雄性大脑中特定性别的社会行为是如何表征的。我们的方法使用即刻早期基因c-fos，这是一种神经元激活的标志物，通过串行双光子断层扫描进行可视化：通过计算检测c-fos-GFP+神经元，将它们的分布注册到参考大脑和脑图谱中，并通过统计测试分析它们的数量。我们的结果揭示了雄性大脑激活中不同且共享的雌性和雄性互动诱发模式，这些模式代表了性别歧视和社会识别。我们还确定了其活动程度与社会行为特定特征相关的脑区，并估计了每个脑区激活神经元的总数和密度。我们的研究为自动筛选小鼠行为诱发的大脑激活打开了大门。
