Posts tagged social behavior
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Tipping the Balance of Behavior
Humans with autism often show a reduced frequency of social interactions and an increased tendency to engage in repetitive solitary behaviors. Autism has also been linked to dysfunction of the amygdala, a brain structure involved in processing emotions. Now Caltech researchers have discovered antagonistic neuron populations in the mouse amygdala that control whether the animal engages in social behaviors or asocial repetitive self-grooming. This discovery may have implications for understanding neural circuit dysfunctions that underlie autism in humans.
This discovery, which is like a “seesaw circuit,” was led by postdoctoral scholar Weizhe Hong in the laboratory of David J. Anderson, the Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology at Caltech and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The work was published online on September 11 in the journal Cell.
"We know that there is some hierarchy of behaviors, and they interact with each other because the animal can’t exhibit both social and asocial behaviors at the same time. In this study, we wanted to figure out how the brain does that," Anderson says.
Anderson and his colleagues discovered two intermingled but distinct populations of neurons in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is involved in innate social behaviors. One population promotes social behaviors, such as mating, fighting, or social grooming, while the other population controls repetitive self-grooming—an asocial behavior.
Interestingly, these two populations are distinguished according to the most fundamental subdivision of neuron subtypes in the brain: the “social neurons” are inhibitory neurons (which release the neurotransmitter GABA, or gamma-aminobutyric acid), while the “self-grooming neurons” are excitatory neurons (which release the neurotransmitter glutamate, an amino acid).
To study the relationship between these two cell types and their associated behaviors, the researchers used a technique called optogenetics. In optogenetics, neurons are genetically altered so that they express light-sensitive proteins from microbial organisms. Then, by shining a light on these modified neurons via a tiny fiber optic cable inserted into the brain, researchers can control the activity of the cells as well as their associated behaviors.
Using this optogenetic approach, Anderson’s team was able to selectively switch on the neurons associated with social behaviors and those linked with asocial behaviors.
With the social neurons, the behavior that was elicited depended upon the intensity of the light signal. That is, when high-intensity light was used, the mice became aggressive in the presence of an intruder mouse. When lower-intensity light was used, the mice no longer attacked, although they were still socially engaged with the intruder—either initiating mating behavior or attempting to engage in social grooming.
When the neurons associated with asocial behavior were turned on, the mouse began self-grooming behaviors such as paw licking and face grooming while completely ignoring all intruders. The self-grooming behavior was repetitive and lasted for minutes even after the light was turned off.
The researchers could also use the light-activated neurons to stop the mice from engaging in particular behaviors. For example, if a lone mouse began spontaneously self-grooming, the researchers could halt this behavior through the optogenetic activation of the social neurons. Once the light was turned off and the activation stopped, the mouse would return to its self-grooming behavior.
Surprisingly, these two groups of neurons appear to interfere with each other’s function: the activation of social neurons inhibits self-grooming behavior, while the activation of self-grooming neurons inhibits social behavior. Thus these two groups of neurons seem to function like a seesaw, one that controls whether mice interact with others or instead focus on themselves. It was completely unexpected that the two groups of neurons could be distinguished by whether they were excitatory or inhibitory. “If there was ever an experiment that ‘carves nature at its joints,’” says Anderson, “this is it.”
This seesaw circuit, Anderson and his colleagues say, may have some relevance to human behavioral disorders such as autism.
"In autism," Anderson says, "there is a decrease in social interactions, and there is often an increase in repetitive, sometimes asocial or self-oriented, behaviors"—a phenomenon known as perseveration. "Here, by stimulating a particular set of neurons, we are both inhibiting social interactions and promoting these perseverative, persistent behaviors."
Studies from other laboratories have shown that disruptions in genes implicated in autism show a similar decrease in social interaction and increase in repetitive self-grooming behavior in mice, Anderson says. However, the current study helps to provide a needed link between gene activity, brain activity, and social behaviors, “and if you don’t understand the circuitry, you are never going to understand how the gene mutation affects the behavior.” Going forward, he says, such a complete understanding will be necessary for the development of future therapies.
But could this concept ever actually be used to modify a human behavior?
"All of this is very far away, but if you found the right population of neurons, it might be possible to override the genetic component of a behavioral disorder like autism, by just changing the activity of the circuits—tipping the balance of the see-saw in the other direction," he says.
(Image caption: MRI images from a neurotypical control (left) and an adult with complete agenesis of the corpus callosum (right). The corpus callosum is indicated in red, fading as the fibers enter the hemispheres in order to suggest that they continue on. The anterior commissure is indicated by light aqua. The image illustrates the dramatic lack of inter hemispheric connections in callosal agenesis. Credit: Lynn Paul/Caltech)
Research Update: An Autism Connection
Building on their prior work, a team of neuroscientists at Caltech now report that rare patients who are missing connections between the left and right sides of their brain—a condition known as agenesis of the corpus callosum (AgCC)—show a strikingly high incidence of autism. The study is the first to show a link between the two disorders.
The findings are reported in a paper published April 22, 2014, in the journal Brain.
The corpus callosum is the largest connection in the human brain, connecting the left and right brain hemispheres via about 200 million fibers. In very rare cases it is surgically cut to treat epilepsy—causing the famous “split-brain” syndrome, for whose discovery the late Caltech professor Roger Sperry received the Nobel Prize. People with AgCC are like split-brain patients in that they are missing their corpus callosum—except they are born this way. In spite of this significant brain malformation, many of these individuals are relatively high-functioning individuals, with jobs and families, but they tend to have difficulty interacting with other people, among other symptoms such as memory deficits and developmental delays. These difficulties in social behavior bear a strong resemblance to those faced by high-functioning people with autism spectrum disorder.
"We and others had noted this resemblance between AgCC and autism before," explains Lynn Paul, lead author of the study and a lecturer in psychology at Caltech. But no one had directly compared the two groups of patients. This was a challenge that the Caltech team was uniquely positioned to do, she says, since it had studied patients from both groups over the years and had tested them on the same tasks.
"When we made detailed comparisons, we found that about a third of people with AgCC would meet diagnostic criteria for an autism spectrum disorder in terms of their current symptoms," says Paul, who was the founding president of the National Organization for Disorders of the Corpus Callosum.
The research was done in the laboratory of Ralph Adolphs, Bren Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience and professor of biology at Caltech and a coauthor of the study. The team looked at a range of different tasks performed by both sets of patients. Some of the exercises that involved certain social behaviors were videotaped and analyzed by the researchers to assess for autism. The team also gave the individuals questionnaires to fill out that measured factors like intelligence and social functioning.
"Comparing different clinical groups on exactly the same tasks within the same lab is very rare, and it took us about a decade to accrue all of the data," Adolphs notes.
One important difference between the two sets of patients did emerge in the comparison. People with autism spectrum disorder showed autism-like behaviors in infancy and early childhood, but the same type of behaviors did not seem to emerge in individuals with AgCC until later in childhood or the teen years.
"Around ages 9 through 12, a normally formed corpus callosum goes through a developmental ‘growth spurt’ which contributes to rapid advances in social skills and abstract thinking during those years," notes Paul. "Because they don’t have a corpus callosum, teens with AgCC become more socially awkward at the age when social skills are most important."
According to Adolphs, it is important to note that AgCC can now be diagnosed before a baby is born, using high-resolution ultrasound imaging during pregnancy. This latest development also opens the door for some exciting future directions in research.
"If we can identify people with AgCC already before birth, we should be in a much better position to provide interventions like social skills training before problems arise," Paul points out. "And of course from a research perspective it would be tremendously valuable to begin studying such individuals early in life, since we still know so little both about autism and about AgCC."
For example, the team would like to discern at what age subtle difficulties first appear in AgCC individuals, and at what point they start looking similar to autism, as well as what happens in the brain during these changes.
"If we could follow a baby with AgCC as it grows up, and visualize its brain with MRI each year, we would gain such a wealth of knowledge," Adolphs says.
Oxytocin promotes social behavior in infant rhesus monkeys
The hormone oxytocin appears to increase social behaviors in newborn rhesus monkeys, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Parma in Italy, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The findings indicate that oxytocin is a promising candidate for new treatments for developmental disorders affecting social skills and bonding.
Oxytocin, a hormone produced by the pituitary gland, is involved in labor and birth and in the production of breast milk. Studies have shown that oxytocin also plays a role in parental bonding, mating, and in social dynamics. Because of its possible involvement in social encounters, many researchers have suggested that oxytocin might be useful as a treatment for conditions affecting social behaviors, such as autism spectrum disorders. Although oxytocin has been shown to increase certain social behaviors in adults, before the current study it had not been shown to do so in primate infants of any species.
Working with infant rhesus monkeys, the NIH researchers found that oxytocin increased two facial gestures associated with social interactions— one used by the monkeys themselves in certain social situations, the other in imitation of their human caregivers.
“It was important to test whether oxytocin would promote social behaviors in infants in the same respects as it appears to promote social interaction among adults,” said the study’s first author, Elizabeth A. Simpson, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow of the University of Parma, conducting research in the Comparative Behavioral Genetics Section of the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “Our results indicate that oxytocin is a candidate for further studies on treating developmental disorders of social functioning.”
The study was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers began by gauging the ability of rhesus macaques to imitate two facial gestures: lip smacking and tongue protrusion. In lip smacking, the lips are protruded and open, then smacked together repeatedly. The study authors wrote that rhesus mothers will engage in this facial gesture with their infants in the first month after giving birth. Tongue protrusion involves a brief protrusion and retraction of the tongue. Although this gesture is seen in other primates and typically not seen in macaques, macaques will imitate it when their human caregivers display it, the study authors added.
By observing the monkeys’ ability to imitate the two gestures, the researchers sought to determine if oxytocin could promote social interaction through a gesture that was natural to them as well as through a gesture not part of their normal communication sequence.
The researchers tested the infants in the first week after birth. Three times a day, every other day, the caregivers would demonstrate the facial gestures in sequence to the infant monkeys, while the animals’ responses were recorded on video. At this phase of the study, the researchers found that some of the monkeys mimicked their caregivers’ gestures more frequently than did other monkeys. The researchers referred to the monkeys who gestured more frequently as strong imitators.
Beginning in the second week of life, the researchers tested the monkeys on two separate days. The infant monkeys inhaled an aerosolized dose of oxytocin in one session, and a dose of saline in the other. In each session, the dose was delivered through an inhalation mask held gently over the animal’s face.
Overall, the monkeys were more communicative after receiving oxytocin, more frequently making facial gestures, than they were after receiving the saline. The monkeys were more likely to engage in lip smacking than tongue protrusion, but were more likely still to engage in either of these gestures after oxytocin than after the saline. There also were differences in the frequency of gesturing among the individual monkeys, with the strong imitators becoming even stronger imitators after receiving oxytocin.
After oxytocin exposure, the strong imitators were more likely to look at caregivers and stand close to them than they were after the saline. Looking into a caregiver’s face and remaining in close proximity to a caregiver are indicators of social interaction and social interest, Dr. Simpson said.
In another test, the researchers found that after exposure to oxytocin, monkeys had lower levels of cortisol in their saliva. Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress. Lower cortisol levels after oxytocin exposure indicate that oxytocin may also function to diminish anxiety, the researchers wrote.
Scientists Find Connection Between Gene Mutation, Key Symptoms of Autism
Scientists have known that abnormal brain growth is associated with autism spectrum disorder. However, the relationship between the two has not been well understood.
(Image: Thinkstock)
Now, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have shown that mutations in a specific gene that is disrupted in some individuals with autism results in too much growth throughout the brain, and yet surprisingly specific problems in social interactions, at least in mouse models that mimic this risk factor in humans.
“What was striking is that these were basically normal animals in terms of behavior, but there were consistent deficits in tests of social interaction and recognition—which approximate a major symptom of autism,” said Damon Page, a TSRI biologist who led the study. “This suggests that when most parts of the brain are overgrown, the brain somehow adapts to it with minimal effects on behavior in general. However, brain circuits relevant to social behavior are more vulnerable or less able to tolerate this overgrowth.”
The study, which focuses on the gene phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), was recently published online ahead of print by the journal Human Molecular Genetics.
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder involving a range of symptoms and disabilities involving social deficits and communication difficulties, repetitive behaviors and interests, and sometimes cognitive delays. The disorder affects in approximately one percent of the population; some 80 percent of those diagnosed are male.
In a previous study, Page and colleagues found that mutations in Pten causes increased brain size and social deficits, with both symptoms being exacerbated by a second “hit” to a gene that regulates levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. In the new study, the TSRI team set out to explore whether mutations in Pten result in widespread or localized overgrowth within the brain, and whether changes in brain growth are associated with broad or selective deficits in tests of autism-relevant behaviors in genetically altered mice. The team tested mice for autism spectrum disorder-related behaviors including mood, anxiety, intellectual, and circadian rhythm and/or sleep abnormalities.
The researchers found that Pten mutant mice showed altered social behavior, but few other changes—a more subtle change than would have been predicted given broad expression and critical cellular function of the gene.
Intriguingly, some of the more subtle impairments were sex-specific. In addition to social impairments, males with the mutated gene showed abnormalities related to repetitive behavior and mood/anxiety, while females exhibited additional circadian activity and emotional learning problems.
The results raise the question of how mutations in PTEN, a general regulator of growth, can have relatively selective effects on behavior and cognitive development. One idea is that PTEN mutations may desynchronize the normal pattern of growth in key cell types—the study points to dopamine neurons—that are relevant for social behavior.
“Timing is everything,” Page said. “Connections have to form in the right place at the right time for circuits to develop normally. Circuitry involved in social behavior may turn out to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of poorly coordinated growth.”
(Source: scripps.edu)
Dads: How important are they?
Even with today’s technology, it still takes both a male and a female to make a baby. But is it important for both parents to raise that child? Many studies have outlined the value of a mother, but few have clearly defined the importance of a father, until now. New findings from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) show that the absence of a father during critical growth periods, leads to impaired social and behavioural abilities in adults. This research, which was conducted using mice, was published today in the journal Cerebral Cortex. It is the first study to link father absenteeism with social attributes and to correlate these with physical changes in the brain.
“Although we used mice, the findings are extremely relevant to humans,” says senior author Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a researcher of the Mental Illness and Addiction Axis at the RI-MUHC and an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. “We used California mice which, like in some human populations, are monogamous and raise their offspring together.”
“Because we can control their environment, we can equalize factors that differ between them,” adds first author, Francis Bambico, a former student of Dr. Gobbi at McGill and now a post-doc at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. “Mice studies in the laboratory may therefore be clearer to interpret than human ones, where it is impossible to control all the influences during development.”
Dr. Gobbi and her colleagues compared the social behaviour and brain anatomy of mice that had been raised with both parents to those that had been raised only by their mothers. Mice raised without a father had abnormal social interactions and were more aggressive than counterparts raised with both parents. These effects were stronger for female offspring than for their brothers. Females raised without fathers also had a greater sensitivity to the stimulant drug, amphetamine.
“The behavioural deficits we observed are consistent with human studies of children raised without a father,” says Dr. Gobbi, who is also a psychiatrist at the MUHC. “These children have been shown to have an increased risk for deviant behaviour and in particular, girls have been shown to be at risk for substance abuse. This suggests that these mice are a good model for understanding how these effects arise in humans.”
In pups deprived of fathers, Dr. Gobbi’s team also identified defects in the mouse prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that helps control social and cognitive activity, which is linked to the behaviourial deficits.
“This is the first time research findings have shown that paternal deprivation during development affects the neurobiology of the offspring,” says Dr. Gobbi. These results should incite researchers to look more deeply into the role of fathers during critical stages of growth and suggest that both parents are important in children’s mental health development.
(Source: muhc.ca)
Honey bees may have only a fraction of our neurons—just under a million versus our tens of billions—but our brains aren’t so different. Take sidedness. The human brain is divided into right and left sides—our right brain controls the left side of our body and vice versa. New research reveals that something similar happens in bees. When scientists removed the right or left antenna of honey bees, those insects with intact right antennae more quickly recognized bees from the same hive, stuck out their tongues (showing willingness to feed), and fended off invaders. Bees with just their left antennae took longer to recognize bees, didn’t want to feed, and mistook familiar bees for foreign ones. This suggests, the team concludes today in Scientific Reports, that bee brains have a sidedness just like ours do. The researchers also think that right antennae might control other bee behavior, like their sophisticated, mysterious "waggle dance" to indicate food. But there’s no buzz for the left-antennaed.
New Form of Animal Communication Discovered
Sniffing, a common behavior in dogs, cats and other animals, has been observed to also serve as a method for rats to communicate—a fundamental discovery that may help scientists identify brain regions critical for interpreting communications cues and what brain malfunctions may cause some complex social disorders.
Researchers have long observed how animals vigorously sniff when they interact, a habit usually passed off as simply smelling each other. But Daniel W. Wesson, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, whose research is published in Current Biology, found that rats sniff each other to signal a social hierarchy and prevent aggressive behavior.
Wesson, who drew upon previous work showing that, similar to humans, rodents naturally form complex social hierarchies, used wireless methods to record and observe rats as they interacted. He found that, when two rats approach each other, one communicates dominance by sniffing more frequently, while the subordinate signals its role by sniffing less. Wesson found that if the subordinate didn’t do so, the dominant rat was more likely to become aggressive to the other.
Wesson theorized the dominant rat was displaying a “conflict avoidance signal,” similar to a large monkey walking into a room and banging its chest. In response, the subordinate animal might cower and look away, or in the case of the rats, decrease its sniffing.
“These novel and exciting findings show that how one animal sniffs another greatly matters within their social network,” said Wesson, an associate professor of neurosciences. “This sniffing behavior might reflect a common mechanism of communication behavior across many types of animals and in a variety of social contexts. It is highly likely that our pets use similar communication strategies in front of our eyes each day, but because we do not use this ourselves, it isn’t recognizable as ‘communication’.”
Wesson’s findings represent the first new form of communication behavior in rats since it was discovered in the 1970s that they communicate through vocal ultrasonic frequencies. The research provides a basis for understanding how neurological disorders might impact the brain’s ability to conduct normal, appropriate social behaviors.
Wesson’s laboratory will use these findings to better understand how certain behaviors go awry. Ultimately, the hope is to learn whether this new form of communication can help explain how the brain controls complex social behaviors and how these neural centers might inappropriately deal with social cues.
Brain adds cells in puberty to navigate adult world
The brain adds new cells during puberty to help navigate the complex social world of adulthood, two Michigan State University neuroscientists report in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists used to think the brain cells you’re born with are all you get. After studies revealed the birth of new brain cells in adults, conventional wisdom held that such growth was limited to two brain regions associated with memory and smell.
But in the past few years, researchers in MSU’s neuroscience program have shown that mammalian brains also add cells during puberty in the amygdala and interconnected regions where it was thought no new growth occurred. The amygdala plays an important role in helping the brain make sense of social cues. For hamsters, it picks up signals transmitted by smell through pheromones; in humans, the amygdala evaluates facial expressions and body language.
“These regions are important for social behaviors, particularly mating behavior,” said lead author Maggie Mohr, a doctoral student in neuroscience. “So, we thought maybe cells that are added to those parts of the brain during puberty could be important for adult reproductive function.”
To test that idea, Mohr and Cheryl Sisk, MSU professor of psychology, injected male hamsters with a chemical marker to show cell birth during puberty. When the hamsters matured into adults, the researchers allowed them to interact and mate with females.
Examining the brains immediately after that rendezvous, the researchers found new cells born during puberty had been added to the amygdala and associated regions. Some of the new cells contained a protein that indicates cell activation, which told Mohr and Sisk those cells had become part of the neural networks involved in social and sexual behavior.
“Before this study it was unclear if cells born during puberty even survived into adulthood,” Mohr said. “We’ve shown that they can mature to become part of the brain circuitry that underlies adult behavior.”
Their results also showed that more of the new brain cells survived and became functional in males raised in an enriched environment – a larger cage with a running wheel, nesting materials and other features – than in those with a plain cage.
While people act in more complicated ways than rodents, the researchers said they hope their work ultimately sheds light on human behavior.
“We don’t know if cells are added to the human amygdala during puberty,” Sisk said, “but we know the amygdala plays a similar role in people as in hamsters. We hope to learn whether similar mechanisms are at play as people’s brains undergo the metamorphosis that occurs during puberty.”
Robovie talking robot joins science class at Higashihikari Elementary School in Japan
Robovie a 1.2-meter robot developed by ATR joined the science class at Higashihikari Elementary School in Japan on Feb. 5 for the start of a 14-month experiment. Data will be gathered to improve the robot’s ability to interact naturally with multiple people. The robot has been given facial photos and voiceprints of 119 fifth graders and teachers. On the first day of class, Robovie greeted the students, and was asked by a teacher to answer what a “wound up copper wire” was. It answered, “A copper coil. It’s part of the motors that move my body.” During class Robovie waited at the back of the room, recognizing the faces of the students and recording their movements. After class it shook hands with sixth graders and answered their questions.
As part of research into the co-existence of humans and robots, the experiment with Robovie is being carried out at a school because the environment allows for the acquisition of large amounts of data from the movements of the children. The robot has been given facial photos and voiceprints of 119 fifth graders and teachers. Robovie’s daily conversation level is equivalent to a five-year-old human, but it has been programmed with the entire contents of a fifth-grade science textbook. This is the first experiment using a robot at a school to last over a year.
Networking Ability a Family Trait in Monkeys
Two years of painstaking observation on the social interactions of a troop of free-ranging monkeys and an analysis of their family trees has found signs of natural selection affecting the behavior of the descendants.
Rhesus macaques who had large, strong networks tended to be descendants of similarly social macaques, according to a Duke University team of researchers. And their ability to recognize relationships and play nice with others also won them more reproductive success.
"If you are a more social monkey, then you’re going to have greater reproductive success, meaning your babies are more likely to survive their first year," said post-doctoral research fellow Lauren Brent, who led the study. "Natural selection appears to be favoring pro-social behavior."
The analysis, which appears in Nature Scientific Reports, combined sophisticated social network maps with 75 years of pedigree data and some genetic analysis.