Cortical ensembles orchestrate social competition through hypothalamic outputs.

ABSTRACT: Most social species self-organize into dominance hierarchies^1,2, which decreases aggression and conserves energy^3,4, but it is not clear how individuals know their social rank. We have only begun to learn how the brain represents social rank^5-9 and guides behaviour on the basis of this representation. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is involved in social dominance in rodents^7,8 and humans^10,11. Yet, precisely how the mPFC encodes relative social rank and which circuits mediate this computation is not known. We developed a social competition assay in which mice compete for rewards, as well as a computer vision tool (AlphaTracker) to track multiple, unmarked animals. A hidden Markov model combined with generalized linear models was a

SUBMITTER: Padilla-Coreano N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9576144 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature