Dynamic and stable hippocampal representations of social identity and reward expectation support associative social memory in male mice

This study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the association between social identity and reward value in male mice using Go-NoGo social discrimination paradigms. The results showed that mice could discriminate individual conspecifics through brief nose-to-nose investigation, a process dependent on the dorsal hippocampus. Two-photon calcium imaging revealed that dorsal CA1 hippocampal neurons represented reward expectation during social tasks, persisting over days regardless of the associated mouse. A dynamically changing subset of CA1 neurons accurately discriminated between individual mice. These findings suggest CA1 neuronal activity is a neural substrate for associative social memory.

Eunji Kong, Kyu-Hee Lee, Jongrok Do, Pilhan Kim, Doyun Lee