The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays an important role in regulating social functions in mammals, and its dysfunction has been linked to social deficits in neurodevelopmental disorders. Yet little is known of how the PFC encodes social information and how social representations may be altered in such disorders. Here, we show that neurons in the medial PFC of freely behaving male mice preferentially respond to socially relevant olfactory cues. Population activity patterns in this region differed between social and nonsocial stimuli and underwent experience-dependent refinement. In mice lacking the autism-associated gene Cntnap2, both the categorization of sensory stimuli and the refinement of social representations were impaired. Noise levels in spontaneous population activity were higher in Cntnap2 knockouts and correlated with the degree to which social representations were disrupted. Our findings elucidate the encoding of social sensory cues in the medial PFC and provide a link between altered prefrontal dynamics and autism-associated social dysfunction.

中文翻译：

---

小鼠前额叶皮层社会表征的动力学。

前额叶皮层 (PFC) 在调节哺乳动物的社会功能方面发挥着重要作用，其功能障碍与神经发育障碍中的社会缺陷有关。然而，人们对 PFC 如何编码社会信息以及如何在此类疾病中改变社会表征知之甚少。在这里，我们表明自由行为雄性小鼠的内侧 PFC 中的神经元优先响应与社会相关的嗅觉线索。该地区的人口活动模式在社会和非社会刺激之间存在差异，并且经历了依赖于经验的改进。在缺乏自闭症相关基因 Cntnap2 的小鼠中，感觉刺激的分类和社会表征的细化都受到损害。在 Cntnap2 基因敲除中，自发人口活动的噪音水平较高，并且与社会表征被破坏的程度相关。我们的研究结果阐明了内侧 PFC 中社会感觉线索的编码，并提供了改变的前额叶动力学与自闭症相关的社会功能障碍之间的联系。