한빛사논문
Tae-Yong Choi,1,8 Hyoungseok Jeon,2,8 Sejin Jeong,1,3 Eum Ji Kim,1 Jeongseop Kim,1,4 Yun Ha Jeong,5 Byungsoo Kang,6,7 Murim Choi,2,* and Ja Wook Koo1,4,9,*
1Emotion, Cognition and Behavior Research Group, Korea Brain Research Institute, Daegu 41062, Republic of Korea
2Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Republic of Korea
3Department of Life Sciences, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan 38541, Republic of Korea
4Department of Brain Sciences, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, Daegu 41988, Republic of Korea
5Neurodegenerative Disease Research Group, Korea Brain Research Institute, Daegu 41062, Republic of Korea
6Sysoft R&D Center, Daegu 41065, Republic of Korea
7Neurovascular Unit Research Group, Korea Brain Research Institute, Daegu 41062, Republic of Korea
8These authors contributed equally
9Lead contact
*Corresponding authors: correspondence to Murim Choi or Ja Wook Koo
Abstract
Social animals compete for limited resources, resulting in a social hierarchy. Although different neuronal subpopulations in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which has been mechanistically implicated in social dominance behavior, encode distinct social competition behaviors, their identities and associated molecular underpinnings have not yet been identified. In this study, we found that mPFC neurons projecting to the nucleus accumbens (mPFC-NAc) encode social winning behavior, whereas mPFC neurons projecting to the ventral tegmental area (mPFC-VTA) encode social losing behavior. High-throughput single-cell transcriptomic analysis and projection-specific genetic manipulation revealed that the expression level of POU domain, class 3, transcription factor 1 (Pou3f1) in mPFC-VTA neurons controls social hierarchy. Optogenetic activation of mPFC-VTA neurons increases Pou3f1 expression and lowers social rank. Together, these data demonstrate that discrete activity and gene expression in separate mPFC projections oppositely orchestrate social competition and hierarchy.
논문정보
관련 링크
연구자 키워드
관련분야 논문보기