RUI: Neurobiology of seasonal sociality in voles

RUI：田鼠季节性社交的神经生物学

• 批准号: 1257162
• 负责人: Annaliese Beery
• 金额: $ 46.81万
• 依托单位: Smith College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-08-15 至 2017-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1257162&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RUI; Neurobiology; seasonal; sociality; voles

Why do some species live in large groups while others interact only to reproduce? This project investigates neural sources of variation in mammalian social behavior, including pathways that support motivation to interact with others and social tolerance. Most of what is known about the neurobiology of social attachments comes from research on mothering and monogamy, while little is known about non-reproductive relationships. The goal of this project is to examine where and how the hormone oxytocin acts in the brain to influence social behavior between peers. This is approached with behavioral, pharmacological, and molecular genetic studies of meadow voles. Meadow voles display environmentally induced variation in social behavior, acting aggressive and territorial in summer months, but living in social groups in winter. These experiments will investigate how seasonal changes in neurochemistry, particularly in oxytocin circuitry, underlie changing anxiety, social tolerance, and social attachments. This fills a gap in our understanding of social relationships by adding the study of non-reproductive peer relationships, and contributes important basic information on how oxytocin contributes to both prosocial and antisocial behaviors in different brain regions. These findings will have implications for understanding sociality across social species, particularly in mammals. These studies will be conducted at a women's college, providing training opportunities for undergraduate women, many from under-represented groups. Students will serve in leadership roles and participate in all aspects of this research including presentation and publication of work. Anatomical and genomic data from these studies will be contributed to online repositories (Data Dryad and GenBank), and custom software will be made available through the lab website

为什么有些物种生活在大群体中，而另一些物种只为了繁殖而相互作用？ 该项目研究哺乳动物社会行为变异的神经来源，包括支持与他人互动的动机和社会宽容的途径。关于社会依恋的神经生物学的大部分知识都来自对母性和一夫一妻制的研究，而对非生殖关系知之甚少。该项目的目标是检查催产素在大脑中的作用位置以及如何影响同龄人之间的社交行为。 这是通过对草地田鼠的行为、药理学和分子遗传学研究来实现的。草地田鼠表现出环境引起的社会行为变化，在夏季表现出攻击性和领地意识，但在冬季则生活在社会群体中。 这些实验将研究神经化学（尤其是催产素回路）的季节性变化如何导致焦虑、社交耐受性和社交依恋的变化。通过增加对非生殖同伴关系的研究，填补了我们对社会关系理解的空白，并提供了关于催产素如何促进不同大脑区域的亲社会和反社会行为的重要基本信息。这些发现将对理解社会物种的社会性产生影响，特别是哺乳动物。 这些研究将在一所女子学院进行，为本科女性提供培训机会，其中许多来自代表性不足的群体。 学生将担任领导角色并参与这项研究的各个方面，包括作品的展示和出版。这些研究的解剖和基因组数据将贡献到在线存储库（Data Dryad 和 GenBank），并且将通过实验室网站提供定制软件