Pediatricians and parents - and, really, anyone who works with children - have long known that a child's social needs evolve with age. Yale researchers have now discovered the neurological signaling that marks this process.
In experiments with mice, researchers observed that Agrp neurons, a type of cell in the brain's hypothalamus region, play a key role in controlling social behavior in young animals but not in adults. The neurons - which regulate primary survival needs like hunger and maintaining body temperature - drive social needs during youth but slowly lose this role in adulthood.
The findings illustrate the importance of social interaction in developing mammals. They also shed new light on how this need is biologically regulated and why it changes as we age and may help scientists better understand developmental social disorders in humans.
The study was published in the journal Current Biology.
"This is the first time you have a neurobiological finding that shows something we already know from experience, and psychologists know from observation," said Marcelo Dietrich, a professor of comparative medicine and of neuroscience at the Yale School of Medicine, and a faculty member at the Yale Wu Tsai Institute, one of the study's authors.
