*EASTBIO* Effects of developmental programming on social behaviour and the brain

BBSRC Theme: World class underpinning Bioscience

Group living has evolved independently in a myriad of species, including our own. It affords several fitness benefits, such as protection from predation, increased reproductive success and enhanced information exchange regarding where, when and how to exploit food sources. However, a social group is not merely a random collection of identical conspecifics. Instead, it is an emergent communal construct founded on a rich repertoire of social interactions between individuals with different phenotypes, motivations and social skills. The ability to effectively interact with conspecifics is a vital skill, as recently shown in primates and birds, where individuals that maintained more social relationships were rewarded with greater reproductive success (1). The fundamental key question is how the social competence of an individual is shaped by current and past environments and to date, knowledge is limited or unknown.

Exposure to altered hormone levels during development can have significant implications for many phenotypic traits in later life. So-called developmental programming has been studied in several contexts, including the role of stress in mediating long-term effects on health and wellbeing (2). Some of these hormonal systems, such as the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis, which is activated during stress, or the nonapeptides released during social bonding can have a large influence on social behaviour, but the potential for developmental programming of social behaviour has not been explored. Recent work by Dr Karen Spencer and her collaborators has provided the first strong evidence that early life experiences can indeed alter the ability to interact with conspecifics in later life. In recent studies post-natally stressed zebra finches exhibited more central positions within a conspecific social network and when faced with a novel foraging task showed an altered social learning strategy to solve the task, almost exclusively learning from unrelated adults, whereas controls were more likely to learn from their parents (3). We also have a wealth of information on brain regions that might be instrumental in regulating the action of hormonal systems and ultimately defining the social behaviour of an individual, but again little work has been done to link these with early life and determine how early life stress could alter brain regions and hence behaviour.

This study aims to integrate information across these different levels: brain, physiology and behaviour to determine the influence of early life on a range of social behaviour traits, such as social information use, response to social isolation, response to novel and familiar conspecifics and social network position. The project will also determine the effects of early life on the neural systems regulating these behaviours, including the social behaviour network and the mesolimbic reward system, with the possibility of using novel imaging techniques (light sheet microscopy) to determine the speed and efficacy of interactions between these two important systems. The project will utilise the zebra finch a highly gregarious passerine bird. The successful student will have the opportunity to learn a wide range of techniques including experimental design, behavioural observation and analysis, quantitative real time PCR, immunohistochemistry and several imaging techniques. The work will mainly take place within the University of St Andrews and the student will be based within the active Mechanisms of Behaviour research group led by Dr Karen Spencer. In addition the student will also have the opportunity to work within the Roslin Institute with Dr Simone Meddle and her group, where some of the neural analyses will take place.