Data from: Social interactions elicit rapid shifts in functional connectivity in the social decision-making network of zebrafish

According to the social decision-making (SDM) network hypothesis, social decision-making is encoded in a network of forebrain and midbrain structures in a distributed and dynamic fashion, such that the expression of a given social behaviour is better reflected by the overall profile of activation across the different loci rather than by the activity of a single node. This proposal has the implicit assumption that social decision-making relies on integration across brain regions, rather than on regional specialization. Here we tested the occurrence of functional localization and of functional connectivity in the SDM network. For this purpose we used zebrafish to map different social behaviour states into patterns of neuronal activity, as indicated by the expression of the immediate early genes c-fos and egr-1, across the SDM network. The results did not support functional localization, since some loci had similar patterns of activity associated with different social behaviour states, and showed socially driven changes in functional connectivity. Thus, this study provides functional support to the SDM network hypothesis and suggests that the neural context in which a given node of the network is operating (i.e. the state of its interconnected areas) is central to its functional relevance.

根据社会决策（Social Decision-Making，SDM）网络假说，社会决策以分布式且动态的方式编码于端脑与中脑结构构成的网络之中，特定社会行为的表达更能通过不同脑区位点的整体激活模式得以体现，而非依赖单一脑区的活动。该假说暗含的前提为：社会决策依赖于脑区间的信息整合，而非单一脑区的功能特化。本研究针对SDM网络中的功能定位与功能连接性展开验证。为此，我们以斑马鱼为模型，通过检测即刻早期基因c-fos与egr-1的表达水平，绘制出不同社会行为状态在SDM网络内对应的神经元活动模式。研究结果并不支持功能定位假说：部分脑区位点在不同社会行为状态下呈现出相似的活动模式，同时证实了社会行为驱动的功能连接性变化。综上，本研究为SDM网络假说提供了功能性佐证，并提出：网络中任一节点发挥功能的神经环境（即其相连脑区的状态），是决定该节点功能相关性的核心要素。