ISTA Lecture: Catherine Dulac (Harvard)

Neurobiology of Sickness and Social behavior

Social interactions are essential for animals to survive, reproduce, raise their young. Over the years, my lab has attempted to decipher the unique characteristics of social recognition: what are the unique cues that trigger distinct social behaviors, what is the nature and identity of social behavior circuits, how is the function of these circuits different in males and females and how are they modulated by the animal physiological status? In this lecture, I will describe our recent progress in understanding how specific brain circuits and cell types direct adaptive changes in behavior during sickness episodes in mice. Finally, I will describe our recent work uncovering how different parts of the brain as well as discrete, molecularly defined neuronal populations participate in the positive and negative control of social interactions, providing a new framework to understand the regulation of social behaviors in health and disease.