Publication Date:
2012-06-02
Description:
Animals evaluate and respond to their social environment with adaptive decisions. Revealing the neural mechanisms of such decisions is a major goal in biology. We analyzed expression profiles for 10 neurochemical genes across 12 brain regions important for decision-making in 88 species representing five vertebrate lineages. We found that behaviorally relevant brain regions are remarkably conserved over 450 million years of evolution. We also find evidence that different brain regions have experienced different selection pressures, because spatial distribution of neuroendocrine ligands are more flexible than their receptors across vertebrates. Our analysis suggests that the diversity of social behavior in vertebrates can be explained, in part, by variations on a theme of conserved neural and gene expression networks.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉O'Connell, Lauren A -- Hofmann, Hans A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2012 Jun 1;336(6085):1154-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1218889.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology and Section of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22654056" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Brain/*metabolism
;
Brain Mapping
;
*Decision Making
;
Dopamine/metabolism
;
Gene Expression Profiling
;
Gene Regulatory Networks
;
Ligands
;
Nerve Net/physiology
;
Neural Pathways/physiology
;
Neuropeptides/genetics/metabolism
;
Neurosecretory Systems/metabolism
;
Phylogeny
;
Receptors, Neuropeptide/genetics/metabolism
;
Receptors, Steroid/genetics/metabolism
;
Selection, Genetic
;
*Social Behavior
;
*Vertebrates/genetics/metabolism
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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