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Review
. 2019 Jan;18(1):e12512.
doi: 10.1111/gbb.12512. Epub 2018 Sep 4.

The other side of the coin: Hypersociability

Miklos Toth  1
Affiliations
Review

The other side of the coin: Hypersociability

Miklos Toth. Genes Brain Behav. 2019 Jan.

Abstract

Affiliative social motivation and behavior, that is, sociability that includes attachment, prosocial behavior (sharing, caring and helping) and empathy (the ability to understand and share the feelings of others), has high variability in the human population, with a portion of people outside of the normal range. While psychiatric disorders and autism spectrum disorders are typically associated with a deficit in social behavior, the opposite trait of hypersociability and indiscriminate friendliness are exhibited by individual with specific neurodevelopmental disorders and following early adverse care. Here we discuss both genetic and environmental factors that cause or increase the risk for developing pathological hypersociability from human to rodent models.

Keywords: Williams syndrome; amygdala; child maltreatment; friendliness; hypersociability; indiscriminate; institutional rearing; neurodevelopmental disease; social behavior; social reward/aversion; synaptic genes.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Variability of sociability in a population.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Convergence of genes and early adverse care experience on neuronal networks to produce hypersocial behavior.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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