AI Article Synopsis

  • Social behaviors among animals can include cooperation, aggression, and parental care, and are influenced by specific brain regions like the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA).
  • This study explored how two different inputs to the VTA—the superior colliculus and medial prefrontal cortex—affect social interaction in male mice, revealing distinct patterns of neuron activity associated with anticipation and engagement in social encounters.
  • The findings suggest that the SC-VTA pathway may hinder social interaction when stimulated, while the mPFC-VTA pathway enhances it, indicating that these pathways play opposite roles in regulating various social behaviors.

Article Abstract

Social behaviours characterize cooperative, mutualistic, aggressive or parental interactions that occur among conspecifics. Although the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) has been identified as a key substrate for social behaviours, the input and output pathways dedicated to specific aspects of conspecific interaction remain understudied. Here, in male mice, we investigated the activity and function of two distinct VTA inputs from superior colliculus (SC-VTA) and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC-VTA). We observed that SC-VTA neurons display social interaction anticipatory calcium activity, which correlates with orienting responses towards an unfamiliar conspecific. In contrast, mPFC-VTA neuron population activity increases after initiation of the social contact. While protracted phasic stimulation of SC-VTA pathway promotes head/body movements and decreases social interaction, inhibition of this pathway increases social interaction. Here, we found that SC afferents mainly target a subpopulation of dorsolateral striatum (DLS)-projecting VTA dopamine (DA) neurons (VTA-DLS). While, VTA-DLS pathway stimulation decreases social interaction, VTA-Nucleus Accumbens stimulation promotes it. Altogether, these data support a model by which at least two largely anatomically distinct VTA sub-circuits oppositely control distinct aspects of social behaviour.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8831635PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28512-4DOI Listing

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