Neural responses to social cues in the accessory olfactory bulb are altered by context and experience.

Abstract

Social interaction enhances evolutionary fitness by enabling efficient communication of physiological information between individuals. Semiochemicals, that convey socially relevant physiological information, are detected by the vomeronasal organ (VNO) which projects directly to the accessory olfactory bulb (AOB). Mitral and tufted (M/T) neurons in the AOB convey this information from the AOB to a network of brain regions particularly devoted to processing social information and affecting social behavior. The dynamics of social behaviors are shaped by both context and experience. However, our understanding of how alterations in behavior, triggered by the same social cues, correlate with moment-to-moment fluctuations in neural activity within social circuits remains limited. Here, we investigate how context and experience alter the sensory-driven activity of AOB M/T neurons using fiberphotometry and find that the context in which a stimulus is presented can be as important for determining the strength of response as the identity of the stimulus itself.