The research titled "An amygdala-to-hypothalamus circuit for social reward" was published online in Nature neuroscience on April 05, 2021. Social interactions and relationships are often rewarding, but the neural mechanisms through which social interaction drives positive experience remain poorly understood. This research developed an automated operant conditioning system to measure social reward in mice and found that adult mice of both sexes display robust reinforcement of social interaction. Through cell-type-specific manipulations, the authors identified a crucial role for GABAergic neurons in the medial amygdala (MeA) in promoting the positive reinforcement of social interaction. Moreover, MeA GABAergic neurons mediate social reinforcement behavior through their projections to the medial preoptic area (MPOA) and promote dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens. Finally, activation of this MeA-to-MPOA circuit can robustly overcome avoidance behavior. Together, these findings establish the MeA as a key node for regulating social reward in both sexes, providing new insights into the regulation of social reward beyond the classic mesolimbic reward system.
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