Venue: Institut Magendie (conference room)
Ibukun Akinrinade
Bains lab
Hotchkiss brain Institute (HBI), University of Calgary, Canada
https://www.ibukunakinrinade.com/
Invited by Giovanni Marsicano (Neurocentre Magendie)
Title
Decoding the Social World: Neural Mechanisms of Social Information Processing
Abstract
Social interactions are fundamental to survival, yet they require animals to continuously acquire, interpret, and evaluate information about others to guide appropriate behavioural responses. Despite the importance of these processes, the neural mechanisms that transform social information into adaptive behaviour remain poorly understood.
In this seminar, I will present research examining how the brain processes socially relevant information across multiple stages of social interaction. Using zebrafish and mouse models, I identify evolutionarily conserved neural mechanisms that enable animals to detect socially transmitted cues, recognize the affective states of others, and rapidly evaluate unfamiliar conspecifics during direct encounters. Combining behavioural analysis, neural activity recordings, genetics, and circuit manipulations, I show that oxytocin-dependent circuits regulate the detection and interpretation of socially derived information, and the hypothalamic corticotropin-releasing hormone neurons of the paraventricular nucleus are necessary for rapid social appraisal during uncertain social encounters.
Together, these findings reveal conserved neural systems that allow animals to extract information from others and transform it into adaptive behavioural responses, providing new insights into the neural basis of social behaviour and its disruption in neuropsychiatric disorders.
Selected publications
Akinrinade I, Kareklas K, Teles MC, Reis TK, Gliksberg M, Levkowitz G, Oliveira RF. (2023). Evolutionarily conserved role of oxytocin in social fear contagion in zebrafish. Science (New York, N.Y.). 379(6638): 1232-1237. DOI: 10.1126/science.abq5158
Akinrinade ID, Varela SAM, Oliveira RF (2023). Sex differences in social buffering and social contagion of alarm responses in zebrafish. Animal cognition. (accepted).
Scaia MF, Akinrinade I, Petri G, Oliveira RF (2022). Sex Differences in Aggression Are Paralleled by Differential Activation of the Brain Social Decision-Making Network in Zebrafish. Frontiers in behavioural neuroscience. 16: 784835. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.784835