Biology subjects

Bueno-Junior, L. S.

Publications and source records attributed to Bueno-Junior, L. S..

8 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Neurotype matching in monogamous rodents is modulated by early-life sleep experience

Studies of human sociability indicate stronger social affinity in matched-neurotype dyads (e.g., two individuals with autism or two without) compared to mixed-neurotype dyads (e.g., one individual with autism paired with one without). Is this neurotype matching phenomenon also quantifiable in non-human animals? Using deep learning tools, we analyzed dyadic male-female interactions in prairie voles, a highly social rodent species. To simulate "neurotypes", voles were exposed to either control conditions or early-life sleep disruption (ELSD) during a critical neurodevelopmental period (postnatal days 14-21), recapitulating two features of human autism: developmental sleep disruption and later-life atypical sociability. Analogous to human studies, voles showed signs of reduced social affinity in mixed dyads compared to matched dyads, including sex-specific changes in aggression and body orientation toward the conspecific. These findings advance our understanding of social affinity, providing a framework for new studies in both animal models and humans.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Developmental time course of social touch, parvalbumin interneurons, perineuronal nets and Mef2c expression reveals a sensitive period of somatosensory cortex development in prairie voles

Social touch facilitates our attachment to others, especially early in life, which may be linked to the maturation of parvalbumin interneurons (PVI) in the somatosensory cortex (S1). These neurons respond to social touch, mature in a sensory experience-dependent manner, and influence both somatosensory processing and social behavior in models of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) are an ideal rodent model for studying these concepts since they engage in a species-typical social touch called "huddling". This study first showed that over development from juvenile to adult, same-sex siblings huddled less and explored more. Next, we tracked two markers of plasticity indicative of PVI maturation, extracellular perineuronal nets (PNNs) and nuclear transcription factor Myocyte enhancing factor 2C (Mef2c) - across seven developmental timepoints. We found that, while PV expression in S1 was stable by P21, PNNs and Mef2c continued to shift afterwards, indicating a protracted development. Four unique clusters of PVIs converge during development between P14-P21, suggesting a sensitive period of PVI development. Finally, to determine environmental factors affecting these processes, environmental enrichment between P21-P28 led to accelerated PVI maturation. This developmental mapping provides a particularly salient model to investigate the molecular underpinnings of cortical and social development.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Mouse Bio-behavioral Phenotyping Using a Digital Homecage Framework for Long-timescale, High-resolution, and Multi-factor Data Collection and Analytics

MOTIVATION Long-term monitoring of behavioral and physiological processes is critical for understanding complex brain-based phenomena and disorders that develop over extended periods, such as chronic stress, circadian disorders, and metabolic conditions. While digital phenotyping is available in humans using smart devices, there remains a deficit in rodent models. To address this lack of long-term rodent phenotyping, we introduce the "Digital Homecage" (DHC) system. Our system uses accessible components and is designed for seamless integration with brain recording technologies. The Digital Homecage (DHC) allows uninterrupted, long-timescale recording of more than 20 behavioral metrics in single-housed mice, captured at sub-second resolution via video, operant interactions, and wheel-running data. This report demonstrates the DHCs capacity to enable continuous, automated tracking of behaviors like actigraphy, sleep, grooming, and food choice options over weeks, thereby opening up new avenues for longitudinal analyses of chronic conditions. Data collected reveal circadian patterns in multiple spontaneous behaviors, aligning with known nocturnal tendencies. The systems potential to facilitate groundbreaking observations on the long-term behavioral correlates of various neuropsychiatric syndromes is aided by open-source software and relatively low cost. The DHC sets the stage for community-driven innovation, potentially transforming our approach to studying complex traits of brain function and behavior in laboratory settings.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

Quantifying social roles in multi-animal videos using subject-aware deep-learning

Analyzing social behaviors is critical for many fields, including neuroscience, psychology, and ecology. While computational tools have been developed to analyze videos containing animals engaging in limited social interactions under specific experimental conditions, automated identification of the social roles of freely moving individuals in a multi-animal group remains unresolved. Here we describe a deep-learning-based system - named LabGym2 - for identifying and quantifying social roles in multi-animal groups. This system uses a subject-aware approach: it evaluates the behavioral state of every individual in a group of two or more animals while factoring in its social and environmental surroundings. We demonstrate the performance of subject-aware deep-learning in different species and assays, from partner preference in freely-moving insects to primate social interactions in the field. Our subject-aware deep learning approach provides a controllable, interpretable, and efficient framework to enable new experimental paradigms and systematic evaluation of interactive behavior in individuals identified within a group.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2022

Dysfunctional Hippocampal-Prefrontal Connectivity without Neuronal Loss Is Associated with Psychotic-Like Behaviors Following Early-Life Seizure

Brain disturbances during development can have a lasting impact on neural function and behavior. Seizures during this critical period are linked to significant long-term consequences such as neurodevelopmental disorders, cognitive impairments, and psychiatric symptoms, resulting in a complex spectrum of multimorbidity. The hippocampus-prefrontal cortex (HPC-PFC) circuit emerges as a potential common link between such disorders. However, the mechanisms underlying these outcomes and how they relate to specific behavioral alterations are unclear. We hypothesized that specific dysfunctions of hippocampal-cortical communication due to early-life seizure would be associated with distinct behavioral alterations observed in adulthood. Here, we performed a multilevel study to investigate behavioral, electrophysiological, histopathological, and neurochemical long-term consequences of early-life Status epilepticus in male rats. We show that adult animals submitted to early-life seizure (ELS) present working memory impairments and sensorimotor disturbances, such as hyperlocomotion, poor sensorimotor gating, and sensitivity to psychostimulants despite not exhibiting neuronal loss. Surprisingly, cognitive deficits were linked to an aberrant increase in the HPC-PFC long-term potentiation (LTP) in a U-shaped manner, while sensorimotor alterations were associated with heightened neuroinflammation, as verified by glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) expression, and altered dopamine neurotransmission. Furthermore, ELS rats displayed impaired HPC-PFC theta-gamma coordination and an abnormal brain state during active behavior resembling rapid eye movement (REM) sleep oscillatory dynamics. Our results point to impaired HPC- PFC functional connectivity as a possible pathophysiological mechanism by which ELS can cause cognitive deficits and psychiatric-like manifestations even without neuronal loss, bearing translational implications for understanding the spectrum of multidimensional developmental disorders linked to early-life seizures.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Early-life sleep disruption impairs subtle social behaviors during pair bond formation in prairie voles: A computer vision study

Early life sleep disruption (ELSD) has been shown to have long lasting effects on social behavior in adult prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster), including impaired expression of pair bond behavior during partner preference testing (e.g., reduced huddling with a pair bonded partner). However, due to the limitations of manual behavior tracking, the behavioral effects of ELSD across the entire time course of pair bond formation have not yet been described, hindering our ability to trace mechanisms. Here, we used computer vision to precisely track multiple behaviors during opposite-sex cohabitation of prairie voles. Male-female pairs were allowed to interact through a mesh divider in the home cage for 72 h, providing variables of body direction, distance-to-divider, and locomotion speed, with temporal resolution as high as the video frame rate (20-25 Hz). We found that control males displayed periodic, stereotyped patterns of body orientation towards females during pair bond formation. In contrast, ELSD males showed reduced duration and ultradian periodicity of these body orientation behaviors towards females. Furthermore, in both sexes, ELSD altered stereotypical spatial and temporal patterns of locomotion seen in control animals that typically varied across days of cohabitation and light/dark periods. This study highlights the utility of computer vision in deep characterization of subtle behaviors and allows a more comprehensive behavioral assessment of the profound and persistent effects of ELSD on later life social behavior. Our findings may shed light on causal mechanisms underlying human neurodevelopmental disorders featuring sleep disruption and social deficits, such as autism spectrum disorder.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2022

REM sleep has minute-scale rhythms in mice and humans: A non-binary continuum between phasic and tonic microstates

Rapid eye movement sleep (REM) is believed to have a binary temporal structure with "phasic" and "tonic" microstates, defined by motoric activity versus quiescence, respectively. However, we observed in mice that the frequency of theta activity (a marker of rodent REM) fluctuates in a non-binary fashion, with the extremes of that fluctuation correlating with phasic-type and tonic-type facial motricity. This demonstrates that phasic and tonic REM rather represent ends of a continuum. These cycles of brain physiology and facial movement occurred at 0.01-0.06 Hz, or infraslow frequencies, and affected cross-frequency coupling and neuronal assembly activity in the neocortex, suggesting network functional impact. We then confirmed that humans also demonstrate non-binary phasic/tonic microstates, with continuous 0.01-0.04 Hz respiratory rate cycles matching the incidence of eye movements. Thus, we discovered a fundamental property of REM, which can yield new insights into our understanding of sleep health.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

A Distinctive Pattern of Hippocampal-Prefrontal Cortical Network Activity during Stress Predicts Learned Resistance

The perception of control over a stressful experience may determine its impacts and generate resistance against future stressors. Although the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and the hippocampus are implicated in the encoding of stressor controllability, the neural dynamics underlying this process are unknown. Here, we recorded CA1 and mPFC neural activities in rats during the exposure to controllable, uncontrollable, or no shocks, and investigated electrophysiological predictors of escape performance upon exposure to subsequent uncontrollable shocks. We were able to accurately discriminate stressed from non-stressed animals and predict resistant or helpless individuals based on neural oscillatory dynamics. We identified a pattern of enhanced CA1-mPFC theta power, synchrony, cross-frequency interaction, and neuronal coupling that strongly predicted learned resistance, and that was lacking in helpless individuals. Our findings suggest that hippocampal-prefrontal network theta activity supports cognitive mechanisms of stress coping, and its impairment may underlie vulnerability to stress-related disorders.

neuroscience↗