Reciprocal cortico-amygdala connections regulate prosocial and selfish choices in mice.

Decisions that favor one's own interest versus the interest of another individual depend on context and the relationships between individuals. The neurobiology underlying selfish choices or choices that benefit others is not understood. We developed a two-choice social decision-making task in which mice can decide whether to share a reward with their conspecifics. Preference for altruistic choices was modulated by familiarity, sex, social contact, hunger, hierarchical status and emotional state matching. Fiber photometry recordings and chemogenetic manipulations demonstrated that basolateral amygdala (BLA) neurons are involved in the establishment of prosocial decisions. In particular, BLA neurons projecting to the prelimbic (PL) region of the prefrontal cortex mediated the development of a preference for altruistic choices, whereas PL projections to the BLA modulated self-interest motives for decision-making. This provides a neurobiological model of altruistic and selfish choices with relevance to pathologies associated with dysfunctions in social decision-making.

Dissecting social decision-making: A spotlight on oxytocinergic transmission.

Social decision-making requires the ability to balance both the interests of the self and the interests of others to survive in social environments. Empathy is essential to the regulation of this type of interaction, and it often sustains relevant prosocial behaviors such as altruism and helping behavior. In the last decade, our capacity to assess affective and empathy-like behaviors in rodents has expanded our understanding of the neurobiological substrates that underly social decision-making processes such as prosocial behaviors. Within this context, oxytocinergic transmission is profoundly implicated in modulating some of the major components of social decision-making. Thus, this review will present evidence of the association between oxytocin and empathy-like and prosocial behaviors in nonhuman animals. Then, we will dissect the involvement of oxytocinergic transmission-across different brain regions and pathways-in some of the key elements of social decision-making such as emotional discrimination, social recognition, emotional contagion, social dominance, and social memory. Evidence of the modulatory role of oxytocin on social decision-making has raised considerable interest in its clinical relevance, therefore we will also discuss the controversial findings on intranasal oxytocin administration.

Concomitant D1 and D2 dopamine receptor agonist infusion in prelimbic cortex is required to foster extinction of amphetamine-induced conditioned place preference.

Dopamine (DA) in medial prefrontal cortex is crucial in extinction of aversive or appetitive experiences. Although attention has been mostly focused on the infralimbic area of prefrontal cortex, a role of the prelimbic (PL) area has been envisaged pointing to DA transmission in the extinction of drug conditioned behavior. Evidence shows that DA exerts its action also via both D1 and D2 receptor subtypes. Here we investigated the effects of D1 and D2 receptor agonist microinfusion in the PL cortex of C57BL/6J mice on expression and extinction of amphetamine-induced conditioned place preference (CPP), in order to ascertain the effects of selective vs concomitant receptor subtypes stimulation. SKF38393 and Quinpirole were used at doses not impairing expression of amphetamine-induced CPP on the day of infusion. Acute infusion of each agonist alone did not affect extinction in subsequent days in comparison with Vehicle-treated mice, while concomitant infusion of both agonists produced a clear-cut advance of extinction of preference for the compartment previously paired with amphetamine. These results show that concomitant stimulation of D1 and D2 receptors in PL is required to foster extinction suggesting a synergic action between receptors or a heteromeric receptor involvement.