Dataset Information

Perceptual mechanisms of social affiliation in zebrafish.

ABSTRACT: Social living animals need to recognize the presence of conspecifics in the environment in order to engage in adaptive social interactions. Social cues can be detected through different sensory modalities, including vision. Two main visual features can convey information about the presence of conspecifics: body form and biological motion (BM). Given the role that oxytocin plays in social behavior regulation across vertebrates, particularly in the salience and reward values of social stimuli, we hypothesized that it may also be involved in the modulation of perceptual mechanisms for conspecific detection. Here, using videoplaybacks, we assessed the role of conspecific form and BM in zebrafish social affiliation, and how oxytocin regulates the perception of these cues. We demonstrated that while each visual cue is important for social attraction, BM promotes a higher fish engagement than the static conspecific form alone. Moreover, using a mutant line for one of the two oxytocin receptors, we show that oxytocin signaling is involved in the regulation of BM detection but not conspecific form recognition. In summary, our results indicate that, apart from oxytocin role in the regulation of social behaviors through its effect on higher-order cognitive mechanisms, it may regulate social behavior by modulating very basic perceptual mechanisms underlying the detection of socially-relevant cues.

SUBMITTER: Nunes AR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7046791 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Perceptual mechanisms of social affiliation in zebrafish.

Nunes Ana Rita AR Carreira Leonor L Anbalagan Savani S Blechman Janna J Levkowitz Gil G Oliveira Rui F RF

Scientific reports 20200227 1

Social living animals need to recognize the presence of conspecifics in the environment in order to engage in adaptive social interactions. Social cues can be detected through different sensory modalities, including vision. Two main visual features can convey information about the presence of conspecifics: body form and biological motion (BM). Given the role that oxytocin plays in social behavior regulation across vertebrates, particularly in the salience and reward values of social stimuli, we ...[more]

PMID: 32107434

Similar Datasets

Project description:Many patterns of affiliative behaviour have been described for primates, for instance: reciprocation and exchange of grooming, grooming others of similar rank, reconciliation of fights, and preferential reconciliation with more valuable partners. For these patterns several functions and underlying cognitive processes have been suggested. It is, however, difficult to imagine how animals may combine these diverse considerations in their mind. Although the co-variation hypothesis, by limiting the social possibilities an individual has, constrains the number of cognitive considerations an individual has to take, it does not present an integrated theory of affiliative patterns either. In the present paper, after surveying patterns of affiliation in egalitarian and despotic macaques, we use an individual-based model with a high potential for self-organisation as a starting point for such an integrative approach. In our model, called GrooFiWorld, individuals group and, upon meeting each other, may perform a dominance interaction of which the outcomes of winning and losing are self-reinforcing. Besides, if individuals think they will be defeated, they consider grooming others. Here, the greater their anxiety is, the greater their "motivation" to groom others. Our model generates patterns similar to many affiliative patterns of empirical data. By merely increasing the intensity of aggression, affiliative patterns in the model change from those resembling egalitarian macaques to those resembling despotic ones. Our model produces such patterns without assuming in the mind of the individual the specific cognitive processes that are usually thought to underlie these patterns (such as recordkeeping of the acts given and received, a tendency to exchange, memory of the former fight, selective attraction to the former opponent, and estimation of the value of a relationship). Our model can be used as a null model to increase our understanding of affiliative behaviour among primates, in particular macaques.

Project description:Social living animals need to adjust the expression of their behavior to their status within the group and to changes in social context and this ability (social plasticity) has an impact on their Darwinian fitness. At the proximate level social plasticity must rely on neuroplasticity in the brain social decision-making network (SDMN) that underlies the expression of social behavior, such that the same neural circuit may underlie the expression of different behaviors depending on social context. Here we tested this hypothesis in zebrafish by characterizing the gene expression response in the SDMN to changes in social status of a set of genes involved in different types of neural plasticity: bdnf, involved in changes in synaptic strength; npas4, involved in contextual learning and dependent establishment of GABAergic synapses; neuroligins (nlgn1 and nlgn2) as synaptogenesis markers; and genes involved in adult neurogenesis (wnt3 and neurod). Four social phenotypes were experimentally induced: Winners and Losers of a real-opponent interaction; Mirror-fighters, that fight their own image in a mirror and thus do not experience a change in social status despite the expression of aggressive behavior; and non-interacting fish, which were used as a reference group. Our results show that each social phenotype (i.e., Winners, Losers, and Mirror-fighters) present specific patterns of gene expression across the SDMN, and that different neuroplasticity genes are differentially expressed in different nodes of the network (e.g., BDNF in the dorsolateral telencephalon, which is a putative teleost homolog of the mammalian hippocampus). Winners expressed unique patterns of gene co-expression across the SDMN, whereas in Losers and Mirror-fighters the co-expression patterns were similar in the dorsal regions of the telencephalon and in the supracommissural nucleus of the ventral telencephalic area, but differents in the remaining regions of the ventral telencephalon. These results indicate that social plasticity relies on multiple neuroplasticity mechanisms across the SDMN, and that there is not a single neuromolecular module underlying this type of behavioral flexibility.

Dataset Information

Perceptual mechanisms of social affiliation in zebrafish.

Publications

Perceptual mechanisms of social affiliation in zebrafish.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets