A new neuroimaging study reveals how the mouse brain responds to an unexpected loss of social status, which has been shown to be a major risk factor for depression in humans, particularly men.
When two male mice meet in a confined space, the rules of engagement are clear: The lower ranking mouse must yield. But when these norms go out the window—say, when researchers rig such an encounter to favor the weakling—it sends the higher ranking male into a depressionlike spiral.
Hailan Hu, a neuroscientist at the Zhejiang University School of Medicine, wanted to know what would happen in the brains of these mousy muckety-mucks when their pecking order was upended. She and colleagues set up a battle of wills, designed to avoid any actual fighting or bloodshed. Ten times a day, over 4 days, the researchers put a dominant mouse nose-to-nose with a subordinate in a clear, narrow tube.
Curious what the rodents’ brain activity might reveal, Hu and her colleagues turned to a technique called fiber photometry, a kind of brain-imaging and mind-control technique all in one. Researchers implanted an optical fiber in the rodents’ brains that can observe the fluorescent light cast by neurons that have been genetically modified to express fluorescent proteins when they’re active. The researchers could also shine light on specific neurons, turning up or down their activity.
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