Social memory engram in the hippocampus

Abstract

Social memory is one of the crucial components of episodic memories. Gregarious animals living in societies utilize social memory to exhibit the appropriate social behaviors such as aggression, avoidance, cooperative behavior, and even mating behavior. However, the neural mechanisms underlying social memory in the hippocampus remains mysterious. Here, I review some evidence from work done in rodents and primates on the brain region(s) and circuits encoding and/or retrieving social memory, as well as a storage for social memory (i.e. social memory engram neurons). Based on our recent findings that neural ensemble in ventral CA1 sub-region of the hippocampus possesses social memory engram, I would discuss the neural network for social information processing in order to encode social memory; and its evolutionary conservation between rodents and human.

Keywords: Avpr1b; Engram; Grandmother cell theory; Hippocampus; Social memory; dCA2; vCA1.