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- Brain transcriptomic response to social eavesdropping in zebrafish (Danio rerio)Publication . Lopes, Joao Sollari; Abril-de-Abreu, Rodrigo; Oliveira, Rui FilipePublic information is widely available at low cost to animals living in social groups. For instance, bystanders may eavesdrop on signaling interactions between conspecifics and use it to adapt their subsequent behavior towards the observed individuals. This social eavesdropping ability is expected to require specialized mechanisms such as social attention, which selects social information available for learning. To begin exploring the genetic basis of social eavesdropping, we used a previously established attention paradigm in the lab to study the brain gene expression profile of male zebrafish (Danio rerio) in relation to the attention they paid towards conspecifics involved or not involved in agonistic interactions. Microarray gene chips were used to characterize their brain transcriptomes based on differential expression of single genes and gene sets. These analyses were complemented by promoter regionbased techniques. Using data from both approaches, we further drafted protein interaction networks. Our results suggest that attentiveness towards conspecifics, whether interacting or not, activates pathways linked to neuronal plasticity and memory formation. The network analyses suggested that fos and jun are key players on this response, and that npas4a, nr4a1 and egr4 may also play an important role. Furthermore, specifically observing fighting interactions further triggered pathways associated to a change in the alertness status (dnajb5) and to other genes related to memory formation (btg2, npas4b), which suggests that the acquisition of eavesdropped information about social relationships activates specific processes on top of those already activated just by observing conspecifics.
- Fighting assessment triggers rapid changes in activity of the brain social Decision-Making network of cichlid fishPublication . Almeida, Olinda; Félix, Ana S.; Oliveira, Gonçalo A.; Lopes, Joao Sollari; Oliveira, Rui FilipeSocial living animals have to adjust their behavior to rapid changes in the social environment. It has been hypothesized that the expression of social behavior is better explained by the activity pattern of a diffuse social decision-making network (SDMN) in the brain than by the activity of a single brain region. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that it is the assessment that individuals make of the outcome of the fights, rather than the expression of aggressive behavior per se, that triggers changes in the pattern of activation of the SDMN which are reflected in socially driven behavioral profiles (e.g., dominant vs. subordinate specific behaviors). For this purpose, we manipulated the perception of the outcome of an agonistic interaction in an African cichlid fish (Oreochromis mossambicus) and assessed if either the perception of outcome or fighting by itself was sufficient to trigger rapid changes in the activity of the SDMN. We have used the expression of immediate early genes (c-fos and egr-1) as a proxy to measure the neuronal activity in the brain. Fish fought their own image on a mirror for 15 min after which they were allocated to one of three conditions for the two last minutes of the trial: (1) they remained fighting the mirror image (no outcome treatment); (2) the mirror was lifted and a dominant male that had just won a fight was presented behind a transparent partition (perception of defeat treatment); and (3) the mirror was lifted and a subordinate male that had just lost a fight was presented behind a transparent partition (perception of victory treatment). Results show that these short-term social interactions elicit distinct patterns in the SDMN and that the perception of the outcome was not a necessary condition to trigger a SDMN response as evidenced in the second treatment (perception of defeat treatment). We suggest that the mutual assessment of relative fighting behavior drives these acute changes in the state of the SDMN.