Understanding how early adverse experience impacts macaques’ social cognition and associated brain functions – sociomonk

It is known that the adversities occurring at an early period of infancy have a dramatic impact on brain and behavioral development. Children with a history of institutional rearing show significant psychiatric problems ranging from social interaction abnormalities, to anxiety and to inattention. Early psychosocial deprivation is also associated with several brain structural and functional modifications, though the brain mechanisms involved have not been well determined. While human studies suggest an association between early adversity, emotional regulatory functions and cognitive deficits, many questions remain concerning the early trajectories and brain mechanism associated to such disturbances. Our project will address these questions by using a nonhuman primate model in which two groups of rhesus macaques characterized by a very well-controlled rearing condition (11 mother-reared, and 10 nursery-reared) will be investigated in order to determine how differences in the early social environment affect the emergence of social-cognitive deficits. In addition to this the two groups are housed in indoor-outdoor enclosures with free access to automated learning devices (ALD), thus providing continuous monitoring of their behaviors. The overall goal of this project is that of elucidating the contributing factors and brains mechanisms involved in the development of social/attentional disturbances and their expression throughout adult life under ecologically-relevant conditions. The proposed project aims at understanding in terms of how early adverse experience i) contributes to the emergence of behavioral/cognitive deficits (Objective 1) and ii) how it affects the development of specific brain circuits (resting state fMRI analysis from adolescence to adulthood and fMRI to assess cortical activation to social stimuli) (Objective 2) and iii) the activity of neuromodulators (oxytocin and noradrenaline) in social and cognitive functions (Objective 3).