The goal of this project is to establish a research environment to investigate how the brain accomplishes the extraordinary task of orchestrating social behavior among members of a group. This work will take advantage of pre-existing differences in social behavior to test hypotheses about what systems in the brain are responsible for those differences. The naked mole rat (Heterocephalus Glaber) is a rodent that relies on social interaction and cooperative activity to survive in its harsh natural habitat. As a result, naked mole rats maintain the largest colony of any vertebrate animal, use a cooperative breeding system to raise young, and are capable of individual recognition of colony members. A preliminary examination, achieved through the development of novel technological tools to track behaviors, demonstrates that within each colony, there is variability in the amount of time animals spend engaging in social behavior. With the help of students supported by this award, we will use a social network analysis approach to identify animals with particularly high or low levels of social behavior, and measure whether brain expression of a candidate hormone, oxytocin, corresponds to these individual differences. We will also manipulate oxytocin levels in the brains of targeted naked mole rats to determine how this influences their place in the social network. Finally, the effect of oxytocin on neuronal interactions in the naked mole rat brain will be determined by using large-scale recordings of neuron activity. As the mole rat behavior and neuronal data are collected, they will be shared, in real time, through social media outlets to promote collaboration and provide unique educational opportunities for students at all educational levels. Teaching fellows, funded through this proposal will help to use these tools to develop new science curriculum for K-12 students in New York City public schools.
