Grant: Project Grant

In humans and other primates, social skills are important in everyday life. It helps for recognizing other's action, intention and behavior that is essential to develop social relationships, hierarchy structure and adapt adequately its own behavior. The current pandemic and its related restrictions led many people to feel social isolation and loneliness, this could lead to some mental health issues. The brain mechanisms that manage social interactions and communication as well as the short- and long-term effects of social stimulation deprivation are not fully understood. The common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) is a small primate who lives in family groups and shares numerous social skills with humans (imitation, prosocial behavior, altruism...). This species has a short lifespan and a high reproductive power that will allow us to study the brain mechanisms involved in social abilities across their lifespan and the effect of their impairment during childhood and adulthood. Issues in social interaction or communication are observed in numerous neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. The marmoset is thus the ideal species to develop preclinical models in order to conduct parallel studies in both humans and marmoset models. Here, we will use imaging techniques (functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging) and behavioral tasks to assess the social and communicative abilities in marmosets. We will test positive and negative contexts of social interaction (affiliative vs non affiliative) and how marmoset calls are encoded by the brain and follow the evolution of these mechanisms across the lifespan. The outcomes of this research project will not only increase our knowledge of the marmoset brain and our understanding of how the social cognition is setting up during neurodevelopment but also support the use of this primate as preclinical models for neurodevelopmental disorders. This will help to determine the best intervention or treatments for those people.