Last week, the 5th CANDY General Assembly took place in the beautiful Dutch city of Nijmegen. Since the beginning of the project, we have been planning to meet in the hometown of our coordinator, and finally could met there in person. On Monday, 15 January 2024, more...
Suppression of Cofilin function in the somatosensory cortex alters social contact behavior in the BTBR mouse inbred line
Riemersma IW, Ike KGO, Sollie T, Meijer EL, Havekes R, Kas MJH.
Cereb Cortex. 2024 Apr 1;34(4):bhae136. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhae136.
ABSTRACT
Sensory differences are a core feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and are predictive of other ASD core symptoms such as social difficulties. However, the neurobiological substrate underlying the functional relationship between sensory and social functioning is poorly understood. Here, we examined whether misregulation of structural plasticity in the somatosensory cortex modulates aberrant social functioning in BTBR mice, a mouse model for autism spectrum disorder-like phenotypes. By locally expressing a dominant-negative form of Cofilin (CofilinS3D; a key regulator of synaptic structure) in the somatosensory cortex, we tested whether somatosensory suppression of Cofilin activity alters social functioning in BTBR mice. Somatosensory Cofilin suppression altered social contact and nest-hide behavior of BTBR mice in a social colony, assessed for seven consecutive days. Subsequent behavioral testing revealed that altered social functioning is related to altered tactile sensory perception; CofilinS3D-treated BTBR mice showed a time-dependent difference in the sensory bedding preference task. These findings show that Cofilin suppression in the somatosensory cortex alters social functioning in BTBR mice and that this is associated with tactile sensory processing, a critical indicator of somatosensory functioning.
PMID:38602737 | PMC:PMC11008688 | DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhae136