Brain News
Researchers at Tohoku University and the University of Tokyo explored brain waves related to social behavior. The study is published in the journal eLife.
The Study
The researchers studied brain electrical waves in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and amygdala brain regions of mice. They also tried artificially replicating social behavior-related brain waves, by an optical and genetic manipulation technique, in several mouse models.
The Findings
The results provided an interesting insight into the science of brain waves. It was found that certain brain waves (at the frequency bands of theta and gamma) showed prominent variations when the mice interacted socially. However, these same brain waves were not present in mice with poor social skills or symptoms of stress, depression, and autism.
The researchers also claimed that artificially replicating social behavior-related brain waves in pathological mice subjects restored their ability to interact socially.
One of the lead researchers, Takuya Sasaki, elaborated: “This finding provides a unified understanding of brain activity underlying social behavior and its deficits in disease.”
To Know More You May Refer To
Kuga, N., Abe, R., Takano, K., Ikegaya, Y., & Sasaki, T. (2022). Prefrontal-amygdalar oscillations related to social behavior in mice. eLife, 11, e78428. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78428