Researchers discover a specific brain circuit damaged by social isolation during childhood

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Given that social behavior deficits are a common dimension of many neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, identification of these specific prefrontal neurons will point toward therapeutic targets for the improvement of social behavior deficits shared across a range of psychiatric disorders.

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Very interesting - thanks @everhopeful

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There is no real drive for treatment like this I find in the NHS where I live.

I am supposed to be happy with a few therapy sessions over the phone during Covid-19 pandemic, and then cease to have issues.

My personal view is if I am paying for something through my taxes, it should be useful.

There has been absolutely no objective testing and I am supposed to just accepted the opinions of a few professionals.

It’s like you can speak to one of these people and they generally find something wrong with you.

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Good one EH!

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To determine whether acute restoration of the activity of prefrontal projections to the paraventricular thalamus is sufficient to ameliorate sociability deficits in adult mice that underwent juvenile social isolation, the team employed a technique known as optogenetics to selectively stimulate the prefrontal projections to paraventricular thalamus. The researchers also used chemogenetics in their study. While optogenetics enables researchers to stimulate particular neurons in freely moving animals with pulses of light, chemogenetics allows non-invasive chemical control over cell populations. By employing both of these techniques, the researchers were able to quickly increase social interaction in these mice once light pulses or drugs were administered to them.

“We checked the presence of social behavior deficits just prior to stimulation and when we checked the behavior while the stimulation was ongoing, we found that the social behavior deficits were reversed,” said Dr. Morishita.

That’s pretty great that they were able to identify a circuit. I wonder how they will manage to manipulate it in people. Maybe they will be able to use rTMS or tDCS. Or, in decades, gene or cell therapy.

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Interesting but the real question is if its replicable in humans and when.

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