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Deconstructing the contribution of sensory cues in social approach.

ABSTRACT: Social interaction is a complex and highly conserved behavior that safeguards survival and reproductive success. Although considerable progress has been made regarding our understanding of same-sex conspecific and non-aggressive interactions, questions regarding the precise contribution of sensory cues in social approach and their specific neurobiological correlates remain open. Here, by designing a series of experiments with diverse social and object stimuli manipulations in custom-made enclosures, we first sought to deconstruct key elements of social preference as assessed by the three-chamber task. Our results highlight the importance of social olfactory cues in approach behavior. Subsequently, we interrogated whether a social odor would activate dopaminergic neurons of the Ventral Tegmental Area in the same way as a juvenile conspecific would. Employing in vivo recordings in freely behaving mice, we observed an increase of the firing only during the transition toward the juvenile mouse and not during the transition toward the object impregnated with social odor, suggesting that these two experiences are distinct and can be differentiated at the neuronal level. Moreover, using a four-choice task, we further showed that mice prefer to explore complex social stimuli compared to isolated sensory cues. Our findings offer insights toward understanding how different sensory modalities contribute to the neurobiological basis of social behavior which can be essential when studying social deficits observed in autism-, depression-, anxiety-, or schizophrenia-related mouse models.

SUBMITTER: Contestabile A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8251867 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Background: Greater impairments in early sensory processing predict response to auditory computerized cognitive training (CCT) in patients with recent-onset psychosis (ROP). Little is known about neuroimaging predictors of response to social CCT, an experimental treatment that was recently shown to induce cognitive improvements in patients with psychosis. Here, we investigated whether ROP patients show interindividual differences in sensory processing change and whether different patterns of SPC are (1) related to the differential response to treatment, as indexed by gains in social cognitive neuropsychological tests and (2) associated with unique resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC). Methods: Twenty-six ROP patients completed 10 h of CCT over the period of 4-6 weeks. Subject-specific improvement in one CCT exercise targeting early sensory processing-a speeded facial Emotion Matching Task (EMT)-was studied as potential proxy for target engagement. Based on the median split of SPC from the EMT, two patient groups were created. Resting-state activity was collected at baseline, and bold time series were extracted from two major default mode network (DMN) hubs: left medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and left posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Seed rsFC analysis was performed using standardized Pearson correlation matrices, generated between the average time course for each seed and each voxel in the brain. Results: Based on SPC, we distinguished improvers-i.e., participants who showed impaired performance at baseline and reached the EMT psychophysical threshold during CCT-from maintainers-i.e., those who showed intact EMT performance at baseline and sustained the EMT psychophysical threshold throughout CCT. Compared to maintainers, improvers showed an increase of rsFC at rest between PCC and left superior and medial frontal regions and the cerebellum. Compared to improvers, maintainers showed increased rsFC at baseline between PCC and superior temporal and insular regions bilaterally. Conclusions: In ROP patients with an increase of connectivity at rest in the default mode network, social CCT is still able to induce sensory processing changes that however do not translate into social cognitive gains. Future studies should investigate if impairments in short-term synaptic plasticity are responsible for this lack of response and can be remediated by pharmacological augmentation during CCT.

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Deconstructing the contribution of sensory cues in social approach.

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