Watarai Akiyuki, Tao Kentaro, Okuyama Teruhiro
Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience, Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Science. 2025 Jul 3;389(6755):eadp3814. doi: 10.1126/science.adp3814.
Recognizing familiar individuals is crucial for adaptive social interactions among animals. However, the multidimensional nature of social memory encompassing sexual information remains unelucidated. We found that neurons in the ventral CA1 region (vCA1) of the mouse hippocampus encoded the identities and social properties, specifically sex and strain, of familiar conspecifics by using both rate and theta-based temporal coding. Optogenetic reactivation of social memories of females, but not males, induced place preference. Ablation of the upstream hippocampal dorsal CA2 region or the medial amygdala disrupted the representation of sex and the sexual dichotomy of social memory valence. Thus, vCA1 neurons use dual coding schemes to represent the identities and social properties of familiar conspecifics as a cohesive memory.
识别熟悉的个体对于动物之间适应性的社会互动至关重要。然而，包含性别信息的社会记忆的多维性质仍未阐明。我们发现，小鼠海马体腹侧CA1区（vCA1）的神经元通过速率编码和基于θ波的时间编码，对熟悉的同种个体的身份和社会属性，特别是性别和品系进行编码。对雌性而非雄性的社会记忆进行光遗传学再激活会诱导位置偏好。切除海马体上游的背侧CA2区或内侧杏仁核会破坏性别表征以及社会记忆效价的性别二分法。因此，vCA1神经元使用双重编码方案将熟悉的同种个体的身份和社会属性表征为一个连贯的记忆。
