Neural circuits for valence updating in social memory.

Authors

Narutoshi Suto, Mu-Yun Wang, Shota Morikawa, Myung Chung, Kentaro Tao, Ziyan Huang, Yuji Ikegaya, Haruki Takeuchi, Shinichiro Kira, Teruhiro Okuyama

Published in

Science (New York, N.Y.). Volume 393. Issue 6807. Pages eadx8231. Jul 09, 2026. Epub Jul 09, 2026.

Abstract

Social animals recognize familiar conspecifics and selectively avoid harmful ones. As social relationships shift, continuous updating of social valence is essential, yet the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. Here, by artificially transforming a previously neutral conspecific into an aggressive one, we show that valence updating depends on enhanced synaptic connectivity and physiological changes within the hippocampal ventral CA1 (vCA1)-basolateral amygdala (BLA)-nucleus accumbens (NAc) circuit. Following defeat, social memory engram neurons in the vCA1 strengthened their connections with BLA neurons carrying negative valence. The vCA1-BLA-NAc neural circuit flexibly regulates adaptive social behaviors.

PMID:
42424460
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 10 Jul 2026.

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