From, Instituto de Neurociencias – Alicante University Spain

Will give a seminar entitled:

Corticotropin-releasing hormone from the prefrontal cortex regulates social preference

Abstract
Social preference, the decision to interact with one conspecific over another, is an important feature commonly displayed during interactions between conspecifics. Social preference can be based on sex, strain, anxiety and kinship but also on social memory, the ability to discriminate between two conspecifics based on previous interactions. Thus, adult rodents prefer to interact with novel individuals compared to familiar ones (social novelty preference) while young pups prefer to interact with their own littermates. Despite social novelty preference being used to assess social memory for decades, it is still unclear which neuronal circuits guide social preference and whether such circuits promote social interactions with the preferred individuals or prevent interactions with the non-preferred ones. The infra-limbic area of the pre-frontal cortex (ILA)  involved in social decision-making  and the lateral septum (LS)  involved in the inhibition of motivated behaviors, including social interaction  are necessary to display social novelty preference but the neuronal circuits and molecular mechanisms allowing them to regulate social interactions are still unknown. Here, we show how the release of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) from ILA into the rostro-dorsal region of LS (rdLS) prevents social interaction between familiar mice. This circuit therefore participates in the process of familiarization (decrease in interaction as a novel mouse becomes familiar) and contributes to social novelty preference in adult mice. We also show how the maturation of CRH expression during the first two post-natal weeks enables a shift of social preference from familiar to novel mice.