RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Developmental effects of oxytocin neurons on social affiliation and processing of social information
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.10.08.330993
DO 10.1101/2020.10.08.330993
A1 Ana Rita Nunes
A1 Michael Gliksberg
A1 Susana A.M. Varela
A1 Magda Teles
A1 Einav Wircer
A1 Janna Blechman
A1 Giovanni Petri
A1 Gil Levkowitz
A1 Rui F. Oliveira
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/10/08/2020.10.08.330993.abstract
AB Hormones regulate behavior either through activational effects that facilitate the acute expression of specific behaviors or through organizational effects that shape the development of the nervous system thereby altering adult behavior [1, 2]. The neurohormone oxytocin (OXT) has an activational role in several aspects of social behavior [3], including social processing [4, 5], attention [6, 7] and reward [8], in rodents and humans. Previously, we showed that this activational role of OXT is evolutionarily conserved in deep time, since OXT also modulates perception of visual social cues [9] and social recognition [10, 11] in zebrafish. In contrast, the organizational action of OXT neurons in maturation of distinct neural systems necessary for social behavior remains less explored. Here, we show that in zebrafish, OXT is required during early life for the display of social affiliation in adulthood. Perturbation of OXT neurons during early development led to a loss of dopaminergic neurons, associated with visual processing and reward, and altered the neuronal response to social stimuli in the preoptic area and the ventral telencephalon of the adult brain. Ultimately, adult fish which were ablated in early life, displayed altered functional connectivity within social decision-making brain nuclei both in naïve state and in response to social stimulus and became less social. We propose that OXT neurons have an organizational role, namely to shape forebrain neuroarchitecture during development and to acquire an affiliative response towards conspecifics.In brief Social behavior is developed over the lifetime of an organism, beginning at early developmental stages. We show that proper behavioral and neural response to social stimuli depend on a developmental process orchestrated by oxytocin neurons that are also necessary for development of dopaminergic neurons in visual processing (PrT) and reward (TP) centers.HighlightsAblation of oxytocinergic neurons during early development reduces social affiliationAblated oxytocinergic neurons recover but their developmental perturbation leads to irreversible reduction in dopaminergic cell number.Early-life perturbation of oxytocinergic neurons blunts neuronal response to social stimulus in adulthoodModular structure of functional connectivity of social decision-making network changes as a result of early life OXT ablationCompeting Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.