Maria Sol Fustiñana Gueler: Encoding social behavior in the amygdala

An animal’s behavior is determined by metabolic, emotional and social factors. Depending on its state, an animal will focus on avoiding threats, foraging for food or on social interactions, and will display the appropriate behavioral repertoire. Moreover, survival and reproduction depend on the ability to adapt to changes in the environment by prioritizing the appropriate state.

Although these states are thought to be associated with particular functional configurations of large-brain systems, the underlying principles are poorly understood. Using deep-brain calcium imaging of mice engaged in spatial or social exploration, I investigate the basolateral amygdala (BLA), a region that integrates emotional, social and metabolic information. I demonstrate that the BLA encodes animals’ engagement in exploratory behavior by means of two large, functionally anticorrelated ensembles exhibiting slow dynamics.

These findings reveal that the basolateral amygdala acts as a low-dimensional, but context-dependent, hierarchical classifier that encodes state-dependent behavioral repertoires. This computational function may have a fundamental role in the regulation of internal states in health and disease.

Research group Andreas Lüthi

Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) Basel 

Host

Ilka Diester