Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal.
Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
J Neuroendocrinol. 2020 Apr;32(4):e12834. doi: 10.1111/jne.12834. Epub 2020 Feb 23.
Sociality is a complex phenomenon that involves the individual´s motivation to approach their conspecifics, along with social cognitive functions that enable individuals to interact and survive. The nonapeptide oxytocin (OXT) is known to regulate sociality in many species. However, the role of OXT in specific aspects of sociality is still not well understood. In the present study, we investigated the contribution of the OXT receptor (OXTR) signalling in two different aspects of zebrafish social behaviour: social preference, by measuring their motivation to approach a shoal of conspecifics, and social recognition, by measuring their ability to discriminate between a novel and familiar fish, using a mutant zebrafish lacking a functional OXTR. Although oxtr mutant zebrafish displayed normal attraction to a shoal of conspecifics, they exhibited reduced social recognition. We further investigated whether this effect would be social-domain specific by replacing conspecific fish by objects. Although no differences were observed in object approach, oxtr mutant fish also exhibited impaired object recognition. Our findings suggest that OXTR signalling regulates a more general memory recognition of familiar vs novel entities, not only in social but also in a non-social domain, in zebrafish.
社会性是一种复杂的现象，涉及个体接近同种个体的动机，以及使个体能够进行互动和生存的社会认知功能。神经肽催产素（OXT）被认为在许多物种中调节社会性。然而，OXT 在社会性特定方面的作用仍未得到很好的理解。在本研究中，我们使用缺乏功能性 OXTR 的突变斑马鱼研究了 OXT 受体（OXTR）信号在两种不同的斑马鱼社会行为方面的贡献：社交偏好，通过测量它们接近同种鱼群的动机来衡量；社会识别，通过测量它们区分陌生鱼和熟悉鱼的能力来衡量。尽管 oxtr 突变斑马鱼对同种鱼群表现出正常的吸引力，但它们表现出社交识别能力下降。我们进一步研究了这种影响是否具有社交领域特异性，方法是用物体代替同种鱼。尽管在接近物体方面没有观察到差异，但 oxtr 突变鱼也表现出物体识别受损。我们的研究结果表明，在斑马鱼中，OXTR 信号调节对熟悉与陌生实体的更一般的记忆识别，不仅在社会领域，而且在非社会领域。
