Highlights • Adult neurogenesis is regulated by the social environment in a species dependent manner. • Context mediates how social manipulations up- or down-regulate neurogenesis. • Adult generated ...neurons in various brain regions contribute to social processing.
Puberty is a key developmental milestone that marks an individual’s maturation in several ways including, but not limited to, reproductive maturation, changes in behaviors and neural organization. ...The timing at which puberty occurs is variable both within individuals of the same species and between species. These variations can be aligned with ecological cues that delay or suppress puberty. Naked mole-rats are colony-living rodents where reproduction is restricted to a few animals; all other animals are pubertally-suppressed. Animals removed from suppressive colony cues can reproductively mature, presenting the unique opportunity to study adult-onset puberty. Recently, we found that RFRP-3 administration sustains pubertal delay in naked mole-rats removed from colony. In this review, we explore what is known about regulators that control puberty onset, the role of stress/social status in pubertal timing, the status of knowledge of pubertal suppression in naked mole-rats and what comes next.
•Puberty onset is marked by the release of GnRH in the hypothalamus.•GnRH is modulated by several key neuropeptides (e.g. RFRP-3, KISS1, KNDy neurons).•Neuropeptides regulating GnRH interact with endo-/exogenous cues to alter pubertal timing.•Naked mole-rats remain pubertally-suppressed unless removed from the suppressive colony cues.•Naked mole-rats allow us to explore how social environment/stress control puberty.
•Social relationships can cause or ameliorate stress.•Studies using group housing paradigms permit study of complex social interaction dynamics.•Studies in diverse rodents illustrate species-specific ...and conserved relationships between stress and sociality.•We examine these relationships in group-housed mice and rats, prairie and meadow voles, and mole-rats.•Consideration of natural ecology of organisms sheds light on species-specific behaviors.
A major feature of life in groups is that individuals experience social stressors of varying intensity and type. Social stress can have profound effects on health, social behavior, and ongoing relationships. Relationships can also buffer the experience of exogenous stressors. Social stress has most commonly been investigated in dyadic contexts in mice and rats that produce intense stress. Here we review findings from studies of diverse rodents and non-traditional group housing paradigms, focusing on laboratory studies of mice and rats housed in visible burrow systems, prairie and meadow voles, and mole-rats. We argue that the use of methods informed by the natural ecology of rodent species provides novel insights into the relationship between social stress, behavior and physiology. In particular, we describe how this ethologically inspired approach reveals how individuals vary in their experience of and response to social stress, and how ecological and social contexts impact the effects of stress. Social stress induces adaptive changes, as well as long-term disruptive effects on behavior and physiology.
We investigated whether interictal epileptiform discharges (IED) in the human hippocampus are related to impairment of specific memory processes, and which characteristics of hippocampal IED are most ...associated with memory dysfunction.
Ten patients had depth electrodes implanted into their hippocampi for preoperative seizure localization. EEG was recorded during 2,070 total trials of a short-term memory task, with memory processing categorized into encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. The influence of hippocampal IED on these processes was analyzed and adjusted to account for individual differences between patients.
Hippocampal IED occurring in the memory retrieval period decreased the likelihood of a correct response when they were contralateral to the seizure focus (p < 0.05) or bilateral (p < 0.001). Bilateral IED during the memory maintenance period had a similar effect (p < 0.01), particularly with spike-wave complexes of longer duration (p < 0.01). IED during encoding had no effect, and reaction time was also unaffected by IED.
Hippocampal IED in humans may disrupt memory maintenance and retrieval, but not encoding. The particular effects of bilateral IED and those contralateral to the seizure focus may relate to neural compensation in the more functional hemisphere. This study provides biological validity to animal models in the study of IED-related transient cognitive impairment. Moreover, it strengthens the argument that IED may contribute to cognitive impairment in epilepsy depending upon when and where they occur.
Neuroendocrine mechanisms underlying social inhibition of puberty are not well understood. Here, we use a model exhibiting the most profound case of pubertal suppression among mammals to explore a ...role for RFamide-related peptide-3 RFRP-3; mammalian ortholog to gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone (GnIH) in neuroendocrine control of reproductive development. Naked mole rats (NMRs) live in sizable colonies where breeding is monopolized by two to four dominant animals, and no other members exhibit signs of puberty throughout their lives unless they are removed from the colony. Because of its inhibitory action on the reproductive axis in other vertebrates, we investigated the role of RFRP-3 in social reproductive suppression in NMRs. We report that RFRP-3 immunofluorescence expression patterns and RFRP-3/GnRH cross-talk are largely conserved in the NMR brain, with the exception of the unique presence of RFRP-3 cell bodies in the arcuate nucleus (Arc). Immunofluorescence comparisons revealed that central expression of RFRP-3 is altered by reproductive status, with RFRP-3 immunoreactivity enhanced in the paraventricular nucleus, dorsomedial nucleus, and Arc of reproductively quiescent NMRs. We further observed that exogenous RFRP-3 suppresses gonadal steroidogenesis and mating behavior in NMRs given the opportunity to undergo puberty. Together, our findings establish a role for RFRP-3 in preserving reproductive immaturity, and challenge the view that stimulatory peptides are the ultimate gatekeepers of puberty.
Group living occurs across the animal kingdom and can shape fundamental aspects of individual biology, including the microbes inhabiting the animal gut. The naked mole-rat,
Heterocephalus glaber
, ...exhibits extreme cooperative breeding (eusociality) and presents an ideal opportunity to study the effects of social structure on the mammalian gut microbiota. Within colonies reproduction is limited to few animals, while the remaining members are non-reproductive, form linear dominance hierarchies, and show evidence of task specialization with stable yet plastic behavioral phenotypes. Here, we sequenced the gut bacteria of naked mole-rats across 6 replicate captive colonies and longitudinally during a colony removal experiment. Colony had much larger effects than social phenotype or status on the diversity and composition of gut bacteria. Our longitudinal experiment revealed that over the course of 2 months, the gut bacteria of previously unfamiliar, newly paired animals did not become more similar. In comparison to mice housed in the same facility, the naked mole-rat gut microbiome exhibited substantial compositional differences including the near absence of Lactobacillaceae and the enrichment of Prevotellaceae. Our study provides new insight into the factors shaping gut bacterial communities in social animals and indicates a prominent role of social group membership but not social phenotype.
Significance statement
The social groups to which animals belong can be strong determinants of the composition of their associated gut microbial communities (i.e., gut microbiome). However, less is known about the link between social status within animal groups and the gut microbiome. We studied this relationship in the naked mole-rat,
Heterocephalus glaber
, which exhibits extreme cooperative breeding (eusociality). Animals within naked mole-rat colonies show clear social hierarchies and evidence of social phenotypes. Across replicate colonies, we found that colony but not social phenotype or status had large effects on the diversity and composition of gut bacteria. During a colony removal experiment, the gut bacteria of newly paired but previously unfamiliar animals did not become more similar over the course of 2 months. Our results show that when decoupled from differences in diet or exposure to microbes, within colony social roles and their accompanying unique physiology and social experience may have little effect on gut microbiota. In contrast, gut bacterial diversity and composition was strongly shaped by colony membership despite being exposed to identical environmental conditions.
In the long-lived naked mole-rat (NMR), the entire process of oogenesis occurs postnatally. Germ cell numbers increase significantly in NMRs between postnatal days 5 (P5) and P8, and germs cells ...positive for proliferation markers (Ki-67, pHH3) are present at least until P90. Using pluripotency markers (SOX2 and OCT4) and the primordial germ cell (PGC) marker BLIMP1, we show that PGCs persist up to P90 alongside germ cells in all stages of female differentiation and undergo mitosis both in vivo and in vitro. We identified VASA+ SOX2+ cells at 6 months and at 3-years in subordinate and reproductively activated females. Reproductive activation was associated with proliferation of VASA+ SOX2+ cells. Collectively, our results suggest that highly desynchronized germ cell development and the maintenance of a small population of PGCs that can expand upon reproductive activation are unique strategies that could help to maintain the NMR's ovarian reserve for its 30-year reproductive lifespan.
Naked mole-rats are a long-lived rodent species (current lifespan >37 years) and an increasingly popular biomedical model. Naked mole-rats exhibit neuroplasticity across their long lifespan. Previous ...studies have begun to investigate their neurogenic patterns. Here, we test the hypothesis that neuronal maturation is extended in this long-lived rodent. We characterize cell proliferation and neuronal maturation in established rodent neurogenic regions over 12 months following seven days of consecutive BrdU injection. Given that naked mole-rats are eusocial (high reproductive skew where only a few socially-dominant individuals reproduce), we also looked at proliferation in brain regions relevant to the social-decision making network. Finally, we measured co-expression of EdU (newly-born cells), DCX (immature neuron marker), and NeuN (mature neuron marker) to assess the timeline of neuronal maturation in adult naked mole-rats. This work reaffirms the subventricular zone as the main source of adult cell proliferation and suggests conservation of the rostral migratory stream in this species. Our profiling of socially-relevant brain regions suggests that future work which manipulates environmental context can unveil how newly-born cells integrate into circuitry and facilitate adult neuroplasticity. We also find naked mole-rat neuronal maturation sits at the intersection of rodents and long-lived, non-rodent species: while neurons can mature by 3 weeks (rodent-like), most neurons mature at 5 months and hippocampal neurogenic levels are low (like long-lived species). These data establish a timeline for future investigations of longevity- and socially-related manipulations of naked mole-rat adult neurogenesis.
The social environment can alter pubertal timing through neuroendocrine mechanisms that are not fully understood; it is thought that stress hormones (e.g., glucocorticoids or corticotropin-releasing ...hormone) influence the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis to inhibit puberty. Here, we use the eusocial naked mole-rat, a unique species in which social interactions in a colony (i.e. dominance of a breeding female) suppress puberty in subordinate animals. Removing subordinate naked mole-rats from this social context initiates puberty, allowing for experimental control of pubertal timing. The present study quantified gene expression for reproduction- and stress-relevant genes acting upstream of gonadotropin-releasing hormone in brain regions with reproductive and social functions in pre-pubertal, post-pubertal, and opposite sex-paired animals (which are in various stages of pubertal transition). Results indicate sex differences in patterns of neural gene expression. Known functions of genes in brain suggest stress as a key contributing factor in regulating male pubertal delay. Network analysis implicates neurokinin B (Tac3) in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus as a key node in this pathway. Results also suggest an unappreciated role for the nucleus accumbens in regulating puberty.
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