Fig. 5: Inactivation of vCA1^→IL neurons during consolidation and retrieval impairs social recognition.

a Left: Optogenetic inactivation of vCA1^→IL neurons. Right: mPFC (top) and vCA1 (bottom). Scale: 1 mm and 2 mm. b Left: Both groups showed reduced interaction times during familiarization. Two-way RM ANOVA: YFP/NpHR, n = 10/12 mice; F_{2, 40} = 1.396, p = 0.2593. Right: Both groups interacted more with novel conspecifics. Two-way RM ANOVA; F_{2, 40} = 0.2207, p = 0.8029. c Left: Chemogenetic inactivation of vCA1^→IL neurons Right: mPFC (top) and vCA1 (bottom). Scale: 1 mm. d Left: Both groups showed reduced interaction times during familiarization. Two-way RM ANOVA: mCherry/hM4Di, n = 10/11 mice; F_{2, 38} = 1.384, p = 0.2630. Right: hM4Di mice showed similar interaction with familiar and novel conspecifics but shorter interaction with littermates, while mCherry mice interacted longer with novel conspecifics than familiar conspecifics or littermates. Two-way RM ANOVA: F_{2, 38} = 8.035, **p = 0.0012. e Left: Both groups showed reduced interaction times during familiarization. Two-way RM ANOVA: YFP/NpHR, n = 18/18 mice; F_{2, 68} = 1.165, p = 0.3179. Right: NpHR mice showed similar interaction with familiar and novel conspecifics but shorter interaction with littermates; YFP mice showed longer interaction with novel conspecifics than familiar conspecifics or littermates. F_{2, 68} = 2.402, p = 0.0982. f Left: Chemogenetic inhibition of vCA1^→IL neuronal terminals. Right: IL (top) and vCA1 (bottom) sections. Scale: 1 mm. g Top: Social familiarization/recognition task with offline-phase chemogenetic inactivation. Bottom: Both groups showed reduced interaction times during familiarization (left). Two-way RM ANOVA: mCherry/hM4Di, n = 15/14 mice; F_2,24 = 1.669, p = 0.1979. hM4Di mice showed comparable interaction times with familiar and novel conspecifics; mCherry mice showed significantly longer interaction times with novel conspecifics than familiar conspecifics or littermates (right). Two-way RM ANOVA: F_2,54 = 9.197, ***p = 0.0004. Data presented as mean ± SEM; each dot represents one mouse. One or two-way RM ANOVA with two-sided Sidak or Tukey-corrected post hoc comparisons. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, ****p < 0.0001. Source data are provided as a source data file. The schematic drawings of the brain in (a), (c) and (f) are reprinted from Cell Reports, Volume 35, Issue 6, Park, et al., Social isolation impairs the prefrontal-nucleus accumbens circuit subserving social recognition in mice, 109104, Copyright (2021), with permission from Elsevier.