Institutional creator:

Instytut Biologii Doświadczalnej im. Marcelego Nenckiego PAN

Contributor:

Knapska, Ewelina (1977- ) : Supervisor

Publisher:

Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology PAS

Place of publishing:

Warsaw

Description:

85 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm ; Bibliography ; Summary in Polish

Degree name:

doktor nauk biologicznych

Degree discipline :

nauki biologiczne

Degree grantor:

Instytut Biologii Doświadczalnej im. Marcelego Nenckiego PAN ; nadanie stopnia: 2024

Type of object:

Thesis

Abstract:

Social partners are an important source of information for animals. By interacting with them, the animals can learn about the properties of the environment such as the presence of mates, food or predators. While we know that rodents have complex repertoires of social behaviors and are capable of transferring information about danger or the quality of food, there is no data on the ability of rodents to gain information about the spatial distribution of resources. The goal of this thesis was to develop a behavioral paradigm, based on the place preference test, to study the ability of rats and mice to detect the source of the food based on the social cues obtained during an interaction with a conspecific. We show that mice and rats can acquire information about the location of food and use this information to guide their exploratory behavior. We show that the potential channel of the information transfer is related to chemical cues emitted in the anogenital region of a conspecific. Using single-photon calcium imaging in freely moving mice, we show that the transmission of a social cue leads to the reactivation of the hippocampal cells encoding the food location and hypothesize that this reactivation may be an instance of planning of the exploratory behavior. Furthermore, we used fiber photometry to measure the responses of the olfactory tubercle, a structure related to the processing of the appetitive aspects of smell. We show that while it responds to nose-nose contacts, its activity increases during interactions with previously fed animals, regardless of whether they provide information about food localization. We also used whole-brain c-Fos expression to find structures potentially engaged in the process of the detection of social cues. We show that two structures - tuberomammillary nucleus and premammillary nucleus may be engaged in the behavior observed in our paradigm. We hypothesize that their role may be related to processing the social cues in the context of the energy balance of an organism and the prediction of energy expenditure. We propose our paradigm as a tool for studying the relationship between social behaviors, spatial navigation, homeostasis and predictive coding of energy expenditure in mammals

Detailed Resource Type:

PhD Dissertations

Resource Identifier:

oai:rcin.org.pl:243072

Source:

IBD PAN, call no. 20574

Language:

eng

Language of abstract:

pol

Rights:

Rights Reserved - Free Access

Terms of use:

Copyright-protected material. May be used within the limits of statutory user freedoms

Copyright holder:

Publication made available with the written permission of the author

Digitizing institution:

Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Original in:

Library of the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology PAS

Access:

Open