Topic #3: Feb 16th and March 2nd: David Dunn

SNACKS & Who is Who March 2nd : Avehi and Hulali

Behavior paper:

McGraw LA, and Young LJ (2010) The prairie vole: an emerging model organism for understanding the social brain Trends Neurosci. 33(2):103-9.

Genomics paper:

Okhovat, M., Berrio, A., Wallace, G., Ophir, A.G. and Phelps, S.M. 2015. Sexual fidelity trade-offs promote regulatory variation in the prairie vole brain. Science 350:1371-1374.

Questions for reading (students must turn in 4 sets throughout semester):

1.     What words or techniques did you not know?

2.     Provide an example of another model organism which has been shown to elucidate neural mechanisms of social behavior; and, provide an example of a technique by which they came to that conclusion.

3.     What brain regions were considered important targets in this study and why?

4.     According to Figure 1, between IPF and EPF males show in part A and B, which one shows a higher density of RSC-V1ar? Why do you think this is?

5.     How can the data of Figure 2 & 3 help one to better understand sociality and its neural mechanisms?

6.     Which alleles were favored for selection and within what context?

7.     What other model organisms can these techniques be used with and what can they help us to better understand, regarding sociality and the brain?