The Brain Activity Of Animals Is Synchronized During Social Interactions

Two articles published on June 20 in the journal Cell show that bats and micellar the Egyptian fruit, respectively, can "synchronize" the brain waves in social situations. The synchronization of neuronal activity in the brains of human interlocutors has been seen previously, as a result of a person who has picked up social cues. These studies now relate to the same aspect. The animals are related to natural social interactions and some aspects of the social behavior of the animals are presented.

"Animal models are really important to be able to study brain phenomena at levels that we cannot normally access to humans," says Michael Yartsev, of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of one of the articles.

"If you think that the brain is like a black box that receives an information and a type of response, the study of social interactions is a way of knowing how an exit is a good information, a loop", says Weizhe Hong, of the Departments of Biological Chemistry and Neurobiology of the University of California, Los Angeles, and principal author of the other article. "Our research in mice allows us to look inside these black boxes and see better the internal machinery."

Previous studies that show how neuronal activity works in humans are synchronized during social interactions that have been used as fMRI and EEG, which analyze brain activity with spatial responsibilities and relatively approximate rates. These studies found that when two people interact, the structures in their brain are decoded and respond to the signals of the other person.

The Berkeley team supervised the bats during the sessions at about 100 minutes each, already engaged in a wide range of natural social interactions, such as grooming, mating and fighting. The bats were filmed with high-speed cameras, and their specific behaviors and interactions were characterized.

As this occurred, a wireless electrophysiology technology was used to record brain activity in the frontal courtesies of the media through a wide range of neural signals, from brain oscillations to individual neurons and local neural populations. We saw that the brains of the different bats became highly correlated and that this correlation was more pronounced in the high frequency range of the brain oscillations. In addition, the correlation between the brains of bats extends over multiple time scales of social interactions, from seconds to hours. Surprisingly, by looking at the level of correlation, they could predict whether the authors initiated social interactions or not.

The UCLA team took a different tactic. Use a device called a miniaturized micro-endoscope to monitor the brain activities of mice during social situations. These small devices, weighing only two grams, are placed in the mice and allow participants to monitor the activity of hundreds of neurons at the same time in both animals. Animals also show relationships between the brain and natural social interactions where animals freely interact with each other. In addition, accessing miles of individual neurons to an unprecedented view of the decision-making processes of both animals and revealed that the interdependent correlation arose from different sets of neurons that encode the behavior and behavior of the social partner.

By obtaining images of two mice in a competitive social interaction, it was discovered that the behavior of the dominant animal drives synchrony more strongly than the behavior of the subordinate animal. Surprisingly, they also found the level of correlation between the brains before how the mice respond to the behavior of the other, as well as to the domain relationships that lie between them.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190620153538.htm