Article
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
Social Plasticity in the Fish Brain: Neuroscientific and Ethological Aspects
Version 1
: Received: 14 September 2018 / Approved: 16 September 2018 / Online: 16 September 2018 (08:43:23 CEST)
Version 2 : Received: 16 January 2019 / Approved: 17 January 2019 / Online: 17 January 2019 (03:48:04 CET)
Version 2 : Received: 16 January 2019 / Approved: 17 January 2019 / Online: 17 January 2019 (03:48:04 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Abstract
Social plasticity, defined as the ability to adaptively change the expression of social behavior according to previous experience and to social context, is a key ecological performance trait that should be viewed as crucial for Darwinian fitness. The neural mechanisms for social plasticity are poorly understood, in part due to skewed reliance on rodent models. Fish model organisms are relevant in the field of social plasticity for at least two reasons: first, the diversity of social organization among fish species is staggering, increasing the breadth of evolutionary relevant questions that can be asked. Second, that diversity also suggests translational relevance, since it is more likely that “core” mechanisms of social plasticity are discovered by appealing to a wider variety of social arrangements than relying on a single species. We analyze examples of social plasticity across fish species with different social organizations, concluding that a “core” mechanism is the initiation of behavioral shifts through the modulation of a conserved “social decision-making network”, along with other relevant brain regions, by monoamines, neuropeptides, and steroid hormones, as well as the consolidation of these shifts via neurogenomic adjustments and regulation of the expression of plasticity molecules.
Keywords
brain plasticity; cichlids; cleanerfish; social plasticity; social decision making network; zebrafish
Subject
Social Sciences, Behavior Sciences
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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