AI Insight
This study identifies the dorsal lateral septum (dLS) in the mouse brain as a critical region for social transmission of food preference (STFP), a process by which animals learn about safe foods through social interaction. Researchers found that oxytocin receptor signaling in the dLS is essential for this social learning, enhancing neuronal excitability through the PLC pathway. When dLS activity was chemically inhibited, mice lost the ability to form socially guided food preferences, while inhibition of the ventral lateral septum had no effect, demonstrating subregional specificity.
Why it matters
Understanding how social cues influence feeding decisions could inform approaches to address eating disorders, improve social learning in neurodevelopmental conditions like autism, and reveal fundamental mechanisms of how social information shapes behavior. The oxytocin pathway identified here may represent a therapeutic target for conditions involving impaired social learning.
Understand the Science
by Hanyu Fu, Zhiqiu Liu, Jingwei Zhou, Luyao Zhang, Cai Liu, Dewei Tang, Shuangshuang Zhang, Anan Li, Dejuan Wang
Social learning is a fundamental adaptive strategy that critically shapes decision-making and feeding behaviors. Through the social transmission of food preference (STFP), animals acquire information about food safety via social interactions, forming a food-odor memory that overrides innate preferences and guides subsequent food preferences. However, the neural mechanisms through which social cues durably influence feeding preferences remain unclear. Here, we identify the lateral septum (LS) as a key node in STFP. We show that LS neuronal activity increases following social learning and reliably distinguishes between socially cued and uncued foods. Chemogenetic inhibition of the dorsal LS (dLS), but not the ventral LS (vLS), abolishes STFP-driven food preference, revealing subregional specificity within the LS. Furthermore, oxytocin receptor (OXTR) signaling within the dLS is required for STFP in mice, where it enhances neuronal excitability through PLC pathway activation. Together, our results reveal a subregion-specific circuit mechanism through which the dLS integrates social information with feeding motivation, and highlight oxytocinergic modulation as a key mediator of socially guided food preferences.