Host: The Japanese Pharmacological Society
Name : The 97th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Pharmacological Society
Number : 97
Location : [in Japanese]
Date : December 14, 2023 - December 16, 2023
The tendency of animals to interact with others and to live in groups is called sociality. Animals show sociality toward novel individuals, mates (partners), and offspring. Sociality toward novel individuals has been extensively studied. However, sociality with specific members of the opposite sex, such as spouses, has not been well studied. In particular, it is still unclear how the abstract concept of sociality with one's spouse is represented in the brain.
In this study, we used prairie voles, a naturally monogamous rodent, to investigate the neural activity corresponding to socialization with a partner. Previous research has investigated the hippocampal CA1 area as the brain region representing abstract concepts. Therefore, we hypothesized that partner representations also take place in the hippocampus.
We chronically implanted silicon probes into the CA1 area of the hippocampus of male prairie voles to record the CA1 neural activity while they interacted with partner or non-partner females. The males huddled with their partner females significantly earlier than their non-partners. Moreover, some CA1 neurons of the subject voles exhibited specific firing patterns when the subject interacted with the partner.
