Department of Physiology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Korea; Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Korea.
Department of Physiology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Korea; Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Korea; Neuroscience Research Institute, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Korea.
Cell Rep. 2021 May 11;35(6):109104. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109104.
Although medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is known to play important roles in social behaviors, how early social experiences affect the mPFC and its subcortical circuit remains unclear. We report that mice singly housed (SH) for 8 weeks after weaning show a social recognition deficit, even after 4 weeks of resocialization. In SH mice, prefrontal infralimbic (IL) neurons projecting to the shell region of nucleus accumbens (NAcSh) show decreased excitability compared with group-housed (GH) mice. NAcSh-projecting IL neurons are activated when GH mice encounter a familiar conspecific, which is not observed in SH mice. Chemogenetic inhibition of NAcSh-projecting IL neurons in normal mice impairs social recognition without affecting social preference, whereas activation of these neurons reverses social recognition deficit in SH mice. Our findings demonstrate that early social experience critically affects mPFC IL-NAcSh projection, the activation of which is required for social recognition by encoding information for social familiarity.
尽管内侧前额叶皮层（mPFC）在社会行为中发挥着重要作用，但早期社会经验如何影响 mPFC 及其皮质下回路尚不清楚。我们报告说，断奶后被单独饲养（SH）8 周的小鼠表现出社交识别缺陷，即使在重新社交 4 周后也是如此。在 SH 小鼠中，投射到伏隔核壳区（NAcSh）的前额叶下边缘（IL）神经元的兴奋性低于群居（GH）小鼠。当 GH 小鼠遇到熟悉的同种小鼠时，会激活投射到 NAcSh 的 IL 神经元，但在 SH 小鼠中则观察不到这种情况。在正常小鼠中，化学遗传抑制投射到 NAcSh 的 IL 神经元会损害社交识别能力，而不会影响社交偏好，而激活这些神经元则可以逆转 SH 小鼠的社交识别缺陷。我们的研究结果表明，早期社会经验对 mPFC IL-NAcSh 投射有重要影响，其激活对于通过编码社交熟悉度信息来识别社交至关重要。
