Immediate early gene activation throughout the brain is associated with dynamic changes in social context

ABSTRACT

Social competence is dependent on successful processing of social context information. The social opportunity paradigm is a methodology in which dynamic shifts in social context are induced through removal of the alpha male in a dominance hierarchy, leading to rapid ascent in the hierarchy of the beta male and of other subordinate males in the social group. In the current study, we use the social opportunity paradigm to determine what brain regions respond to this dynamic change in social context, allowing an individual to recognize the absence of the alpha male and subsequently perform status-appropriate social behaviors. Replicating our previous work, we show that following removal of the alpha male, beta males rapidly ascend the social hierarchy and attain dominant status by increasing aggression towards more subordinate individuals. Analysis of patterns of Fos immunoreactivity throughout the brain indicates that in individuals undergoing social ascent, there is increased activity in regions of the social behavior network, as well as the infralimbic and prelimbic regions of the prefrontal cortex and areas of the hippocampus. Our findings demonstrate that male mice are able to respond to changes in social context and provide insight into the how the brain processes these complex behavioral changes.

KEYWORDS:

• Social context
• social hierarchy
• prefrontal cortex
• social behavior network

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all members of the Curley Lab for their help in collecting behavioral data as well as Alesi Lanham for her assistance with the immunohistochemistry.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Psychology, Columbia University (JC), the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, under Grant DGE-16-44869 (CW), and the Samsung Scholarship Foundation (WL).