Intrinsic cortical dynamics in the hippocampus-PFC system and social interactions during collective navigation in a decision-making task
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2020
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Abstract
Environmental sensory inputs and previously learned information to guide decision-making during complex behaviors such as foraging or navigation. Social mammals forage collectively, yet little is known about the influence of social interactions in decision-making during collective spatial navigation. To achieve efficient decision-making, social animals engaging in collective behavior must balance inherent and contingent factors, yet this process is not well understood. Here, I implemented a simplified spatial navigation task in rodents to assess the role of social interactions and found that they exert a powerful influence on individual decision-making. Indeed, instead of prioritizing memory-based pertinent information, mice shifted their decisions according to contingent social interactions arising during collective navigation. Dominance hierarchy, a form of a social ranking system, was an intrinsic social interaction relevant to organize the timing of behavior during collective navigation. Thus, individual task accuracy was dependent on the density of animals collectively moving during spatial navigation. Finally, dominance hierarchy correlated with brain-state specific coordinated activity expressed as larger hippocampal sharp-wave ripples associated with higher prefrontal firing rates, suggesting reinforced synaptic cortical coupling. These results suggest that both contingent and intrinsic social interactions modulate behavioral performance and are correlated with enhanced activity and connectivity patterns in the hippocampo-prefrontal circuit.
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Tesis (Doctor en Neurociencias)--Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2020