# Parallel maturation of social behaviors and amygdala circuits

> **NIH NIH R01** · ROSALIND FRANKLIN UNIV OF MEDICINE & SCI · 2023 · $390,000

## Abstract

Project Summary
There is a critical developmental window for maturation of social functioning. Harmful social experiences
during this time can produce life-long social impairments, and contribute to mental illness. This may be due
to effects of the social environment on the development of key brain regions involved in complex social
behaviors, such as the amygdala. The long-term goal of our research is to understand how social
experience during development shapes the function of the amygdala and interconnected regions, and how
dysfunction in these circuits produces social impairments. Social function requires a balance between the
drive to engage in social behaviors and normal social caution in ambiguous social situations. The short-term
goal of these experiments is to test whether the balance between social drive and social caution changes
during development, whether medial amygdala (MeA) function underlies this balance, and whether
disruption of social development impairs this balance of MeA function. This project will test the hypothesis
that there is lower social caution during the prepubertal period and immaturity of MeA outputs to brain
regions that engage social caution. The balance between social drive and social caution is sensitive to
social conditions. This project will also test the hypothesis that conditions that promote social drive activate
MeA outputs to brain regions that promote social behaviors, and that the balance between social drive and
social caution is disrupted by harmful developmental social experience. The Aims of this project are to
determine if social function shifts from social drive towards social caution across development, if the
balance between MeA output paths shift across development, and if disruption of social development
impairs the balance between social drive and caution. This project will compare the mechanisms that
regulate MeA activity and social behavior across age. This project is significant because it can uncover a
novel neurobiological mechanism for differences in the balance of social drive and social anxiety across
age, and novel mechanisms for the effects of harmful social experience on the neural substrates of social
behaviors. These experiments are innovative because they will examine the role of amygdala development
in social behavior in the context of a new functional framework. This approach will yield exciting new
information about the development of social behavior in parallel with the development of MeA circuits. This
project will lead to novel insight about social development, and how social experience can produce social
withdrawal and anxiety, major symptoms in several mental illnesses.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10542777
- **Project number:** 5R01MH118237-05
- **Recipient organization:** ROSALIND FRANKLIN UNIV OF MEDICINE & SCI
- **Principal Investigator:** Jeremy E Rosenkranz
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $390,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-03-01 → 2024-09-16

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10542777

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10542777, Parallel maturation of social behaviors and amygdala circuits (5R01MH118237-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10542777. Licensed CC0.

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