Linster Christiane, Wolf David, Kelsch Wolfgang
Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz 55131, Germany.
eNeuro. 2025 Jul 28;12(7). doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0143-25.2025. Print 2025 Jul.
Recognition of conspecific individuals in mammals is an important skill, thought to be mediated by a distributed array of neural networks, including those processing olfactory cues. Recent data from our groups have shown that social memory can be supported by olfactory cues alone and that interactions with an individual lead to increased neural representations of that individual in the anterior olfactory nucleus, an olfactory network strongly modulated by the neuropeptide oxytocin. We here show, using a computational model, how enhanced representations in the AON can easily arise during the encoding phase, how they can be modulated by OXT, and how a dynamic memory signature in the form of enhanced oscillations in the beta range arises from the architecture of the neural networks involved. These findings have implications for our understanding how social memories are formed and retrieved and generate further hypotheses that can be tested experimentally.
识别哺乳动物中的同种个体是一项重要技能,人们认为这是由一系列分布式神经网络介导的,包括那些处理嗅觉线索的网络。我们团队最近的数据表明,社交记忆仅靠嗅觉线索就能得到支持,并且与个体的互动会导致该个体在前嗅核中的神经表征增加,前嗅核是一个受神经肽催产素强烈调节的嗅觉网络。我们在此使用计算模型展示了,在前嗅核中增强的表征如何在编码阶段轻易出现,它们如何被催产素调节,以及涉及的神经网络结构如何产生以β波段增强振荡形式存在的动态记忆特征。这些发现对我们理解社交记忆如何形成和提取具有启示意义,并产生了可通过实验检验的进一步假设。