Prefrontal-amygdalar oscillations related to social interaction behavior in mice

Abstract

SUMMARYThe medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala are involved in the regulation of social behavior and associated with psychiatric diseases but their detailed neurophysiological mechanisms at a network level remain unclear. We recorded local field potentials (LFPs) from the dorsal medial PFC (dmPFC) and basolateral amygdala (BLA) while mice engaged on social behavior. We found that in wild-type mice, both the dmPFC and BLA increased 4–7 Hz oscillation power and decreased 30–60 Hz power when they needed to attend to another target mouse. In mouse models with reduced social interactions, dmPFC 4–7 Hz power further increased especially when they exhibited social avoidance behavior. In contrast, dmPFC and BLA decreased 4–7 Hz power when wild-type mice socially approached a target mouse. Frequency-specific optogenetic manipulations of replicating social approach-related LFP patterns restored social interaction behavior in socially deficient mice. These results demonstrate a neurophysiological substrate of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala related to social behavior and provide a unified pathophysiological understanding of neuronal population dynamics underlying social behavioral deficits.

Hearing, touching, and multisensory integration during mate choice

“…Prefrontal-amygdala connections have been shown to be involved in social-decision making (Gangopadhyay et al, 2021 ) and more specifically to drive social approach/preference behavior (Huang et al, 2020 ; Kuga et al, 2021 ) through positive vs. negative valence-encoding (Felix-Ortiz et al, 2016 ; Huang et al, 2020 ). There are also recent studies pointing to the PFC (Zhou et al, 2017 ; Padilla-Coreano et al, 2022 ) and amygdala (Hong et al, 2014 ; Lee et al, 2016 , 2021 ; Dwortz et al, 2022 ) as neural correlates for social hierarchy as the dominance level, for instance, was reflected in the gene expression of corticotropin releasing factor (So et al, 2015 ) in the medial amygdala.…”