PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Woohyun Kim
AU  - Young Woo Noh
AU  - Seungjoon Lee
AU  - Woochul Choi
AU  - Se-Bum Paik
AU  - Min Whan Jung
AU  - Eunee Lee
AU  - Eunjoon Kim
TI  - Suppressed prefrontal neuronal firing variability and impaired social representation in IRSp53-mutant mice
AID  - 10.1101/2021.11.17.468945
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.11.17.468945
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/19/2021.11.17.468945.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/19/2021.11.17.468945.full
AB  - Social deficit is a major feature of neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, but its neural mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we examined neuronal discharge characteristics in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of IRSp53-mutant mice, which show social deficits, during social approach. IRSp53-mutant excitatory mPFC neurons displayed an increase in baseline neuronal firing and decreases in variability and dynamic range of firing rates and burst firing during social and non-social target approaches compared to wild-type controls. As a consequence, their firing activity was less differential between social and non-social targets. In addition, there was a decrease in the proportion of excitatory mPFC neurons encoding social information but not that of those encoding non-social information. These results suggest that insufficient neuronal activity dynamics may underlie impaired cortical encoding of social information and social behaviors in IRSp53-mutant mice.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.