Biology subjects

Weissbrod, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Weissbrod, A..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

A Human Aggression Pheromone Elicits a Sexually Dimorphic Behavioral and Brain Response

Body-volatiles can effectively trigger or block conspecific aggression in terrestrial mammals. Here we tested whether hexadecanal (HEX), a human body-volatile implicated as a mammalian-wide social cue, impacts human aggression. Using validated behavioural paradigms, we observed a remarkable dissociation: sniffing HEX blocked aggression in men, but triggered aggression in women. Next, using functional brain imaging, we uncovered a pattern of brain activity mirroring behaviour: In both men and women, HEX increased activity in the left angular gyrus, an area implicated in perception of social cues. Hex then modulated functional connectivity between the angular gyrus and a brain network implicated in social appraisal (temporal pole) and aggressive execution (amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex) in a sex-dependent manner consistent with behaviour: increasing connectivity in men, but decreasing connectivity in women. These findings implicate sex-specific social chemosignaling at the mechanistic heart of human aggressive behaviour.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Dynamics of social representation in the mouse prefrontal cortex

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays an important role in regulating social functions in mammals, and impairments in this region have been linked with social dysfunction in psychiatric disorders. Yet little is known of how the PFC encodes social information and of how social representations may be altered in such disorders. Here, we show that neurons in the medial PFC (mPFC) of freely behaving mice preferentially respond to socially-relevant sensory cues. Population activity patterns in the mPFC differed considerably between social and nonsocial stimuli and underwent experience-dependent refinement. In Cntnap2 knockout mice, a genetic model of autism, both the categorization of sensory stimuli and the refinement of social representations were impaired. Noise levels in spontaneous population activity were higher in Cntnap2 mice, and correlated strongly with the degree to which social representations were disrupted. Our findings elucidate the encoding of social sensory cues in the mPFC, and provide an important link between altered prefrontal dynamics and autism-associated social dysfunction.

neuroscience↗