# Functional ontogeny of pair bonding neural circuits

> **NIH NIH DP5** · UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO · 2023 · $371,475

## Abstract

Project summary/Abstract
The rewarding bonds we forge in adulthood, in particular our pair bonds with romantic partners, have innumerable
protective effects on our brains and behaviors. Individuals with difficulties in social engagement and competence, such
as those suffering from social anxiety, major depression, ADHD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, are particularly
susceptible to the health risks of social isolation and impoverished social networks. Aberrant activity of dopaminergic
reward systems during adolescence coincides with the onset of many of these disorders, suggesting that developmental
abnormalities in the neural substrates that promote social reward underlies disease pathology. Critically, most of what
we know about the neural mechanisms that facilitate pair bonding come from the study of adult brains, highlighting a
dire need to investigate the functional development of social bonding circuits to design better therapeutic treatments
for social dysfunctions. The current proposal aims to leverage the socially monogamous prairie vole system to
investigate the maturational changes in dopaminergic reward circuitry that initiate the capacity for pair bonding in
adulthood. Prairie voles form strong pair bonds with their mates, which relies on the functional activity of dopamine
systems. In Aim 1, I will use fiber photometry to ask how developmental age and sex mediates socially induced changes
in in vivo dopaminergic neural activity. In Aim 2, I will use chemogenetic approaches to investigate how perturbing
dopamine circuits during sensitive developmental periods impacts adult pair bonding phenotypes. Finally, in Aim 3 I will
investigate the developmental changes in transcriptional signatures of same‐sex and opposite‐sex social interactions as
prairie voles mature and become capable of dopamine‐dependent pair bonding. Altogether, these efforts will determine
how social experiences across developmental time scaffold the maturation of pair bonding dopamine circuits. These
findings will profer novel insights into the molecular and cellular processes that may be disrupted in neuropsychiatric
illnesses involving impaired bonding behaviors, which cannot be investigated in traditional non‐bonding rodent models.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10704079
- **Project number:** 5DP5OD033437-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO
- **Principal Investigator:** Lisa Hiura
- **Activity code:** DP5 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $371,475
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-09-13 → 2027-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10704079

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10704079, Functional ontogeny of pair bonding neural circuits (5DP5OD033437-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10704079. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*