Chari Trishala, Hernandez Ariana, Couto João, Portera-Cailliau Carlos
Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2025 May 17;16(1):4600. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-59852-6.
Social touch is critical for communication to impart emotions and intentions. However, certain autistic individuals experience aversion to social touch. Here, we used Neuropixels probes to record neural responses to social vs. non-social interactions in somatosensory cortex, tail of striatum, and basolateral amygdala. We find that wild type mice show aversion to repeated presentations of an inanimate object but not of another mouse. Cortical neurons are modulated especially by touch context (social vs. object), while striatal neurons change their preference depending on whether mice could choose or not to interact. In contrast, Fmr1 knockout (KO) mice, a model of autism, find social and non-social interactions equally aversive, especially at close proximity, and their cortical/striatal neurons are less able to discriminate social valence. A linear model shows that the encoding of certain avoidance/aversive behaviors in cortical neuron activity differed between genotypes. Thus, a reduced capacity to represent social stimuli at the circuit level may underlie social avoidance in autism.
社交触摸对于传达情感和意图的交流至关重要。然而，某些自闭症个体对社交触摸有厌恶感。在此，我们使用神经像素探针记录体感皮层、纹状体尾部和基底外侧杏仁核中对社交与非社交互动的神经反应。我们发现野生型小鼠对无生命物体的重复呈现表现出厌恶，但对另一只小鼠则不然。皮层神经元尤其受到触摸情境（社交与物体）的调节，而纹状体神经元则根据小鼠是否能够选择进行互动来改变其偏好。相比之下，脆性X智力低下1基因敲除（KO）小鼠作为自闭症模型，对社交和非社交互动同样感到厌恶，尤其是在近距离时，并且它们的皮层/纹状体神经元区分社交效价的能力较弱。线性模型表明，皮层神经元活动中某些回避/厌恶行为的编码在不同基因型之间存在差异。因此，在神经回路水平上呈现社交刺激的能力降低可能是自闭症社交回避的基础。
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