Ray Saikat, Yona Itay, Elami Nadav, Palgi Shaked, Latimer Kenneth W, Jacobsen Bente, Witter Menno P, Las Liora, Ulanovsky Nachum
Department of Brain Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
Science. 2025 Jan 31;387(6733):eadk9385. doi: 10.1126/science.adk9385.
Social animals live in groups and interact volitionally in complex ways. However, little is known about neural responses under such natural conditions. Here, we investigated hippocampal CA1 neurons in a mixed-sex group of five to 10 freely behaving wild Egyptian fruit bats that lived continuously in a laboratory-based cave and formed a stable social network. In-flight, most hippocampal place cells were socially modulated and represented the identity and sex of conspecifics. Upon social interactions, neurons represented specific interaction types. During active observation, neurons encoded the bat's own position and head direction, together with the position, direction, and identity of multiple conspecifics. Identity-coding neurons encoded the same bat across contexts. The strength of identity coding was modulated by sex, hierarchy, and social affiliation. Thus, hippocampal neurons form a multidimensional sociospatial representation of the natural world.
群居动物以群体形式生活，并以复杂的方式进行自主互动。然而，对于在这种自然条件下的神经反应却知之甚少。在这里，我们研究了五到十只自由活动的野生埃及果蝠组成的混合性别群体中的海马CA1神经元，这些果蝠持续生活在基于实验室的洞穴中，并形成了稳定的社会网络。在飞行过程中，大多数海马位置细胞受到社会调节，并代表同种个体的身份和性别。在社交互动时，神经元代表特定的互动类型。在积极观察期间，神经元编码蝙蝠自身的位置和头部方向，以及多个同种个体的位置、方向和身份。身份编码神经元在不同情境下编码同一只蝙蝠。身份编码的强度受到性别、等级制度和社会关系的调节。因此，海马神经元形成了自然世界的多维社会空间表征。
