Neural circuits for social communication

Introduction

The main objective of this proposal is to understand how vocal communication is used to organize social groups and, in turn, how brain circuits have evolved to process social information encoded in vocal cues. The naked mole-rat, as one of only two eusocial mammals, is especially well-suited to this research question.

Social Structure of Naked Mole-Rats

Naked mole-rats form highly cooperative social units and, like bees, wasps, and ants, live in multigenerational colonies under the control of a single breeding female, the queen.

Vocal Communication

In addition to their extreme cooperativity, these rodents are highly vocal, with a repertoire of greater than 25 distinct vocalizations, comparable to that of non-human primates.

Greeting Calls and Dialects

I recently identified that naked mole-rat greeting calls, soft chirps, encode information about individual identity and are modulated to create distinct colony-specific dialects. Vocal dialects can be learned early in life and are influenced by social cues, such as the presence or absence of the queen.

Research Significance

These features position the naked mole-rat as a promising, yet unexplored model for investigating the evolution of neural circuits for vocal communication, sociality, and language.

Methodology

I will employ a combination of the following tools to investigate:

1. Behavioral analysis
2. Computational modeling
3. Electrophysiological techniques
4. Molecular biology
5. In vivo imaging

Research Questions

The investigation will focus on how:

1. Social identity is encoded at the earliest stages of auditory processing within the naked mole-rat brain.
2. Neural circuits for vocal production are shaped by auditory environments during development.
3. Social interactions, acting through transcriptomic and molecular mechanisms, influence vocal behaviors.

Potential Impact

This work has the potential to not only expand our understanding of the neural architecture underlying the sensory coding and production of vocalizations but also to provide insights into complex social behaviors such as empathy and altruism.