Dynamics of social representation in the mouse prefrontal cortex

Levy, Tamir, Kaufman, Parabucki, Weissbrod, Schneidman, Yizhar · Nature Neuroscience · 2019 · neuroscience · 10.1038/s41593-019-0531-z · record levy2019-dynamics-of-social-representation
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית
Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. limitations is empty on purpose: this is the bioRxiv preprint version and it contains no limitations statement about its own study — the only self-restricting sentences are data exclusions in Methods (one mouse dropped for too few simultaneous units, one for a video file fault), which are procedural, not stated limits. Claim type 'existence' rather than 'mechanism': the headline demonstration is that a social/nonsocial category code exists in mPFC; the noise-to-deficit link is presented as a correlation ('correlated strongly'), not a demonstrated cause. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact s 2026-08-14 schema-0.3 pass: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.
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Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
principal component analysis 5 fields · cross-validation 3 fields

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Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 5 concept tags on this paper, all 5 are grounded in a quoted sentence.
social distinction index nonsocial odors odor-evoked response magnitude separation baseline noise levels Elevated baseline cortical noise degrades the mPFC's ability to form category-specific social representations and to drive the synaptic plasticity that refines them Loss of CNTNAP2 impairs targeting of AMPA and NMDA receptors to post-synaptic membranes, removing the plasticity that would otherwise refine odour-category representations with experience Jensen-Shannon divergence cortical noise unit tuning evoked firing rate cortical noise level locomotion level Friedman test Wilcoxon signed-rank test post hoc Wilcoxon signed-ranked test ANOVA Two-way repeated measures (RM) ANOVA t-test Student’s t-test chi-squared standardized residuals Standardized residual analysis z-score Response Z-score Bonferroni correction Bonferroni correction for post hoc comparisons Levene's test Levene’s test principal component analysis Principal Component Analysis (PCA) cross-validation cross-validation values multiple regression Multiple regression analysis maximum likelihood classification maximum likelihood classifiers standard error of the mean mean ± SEM electrophysiology

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relation to other workclaim_relationshow this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim typeclaim_typethe shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edgeconcept_edgesan asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
conceptconceptsan idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tagcontent_tagsa finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
controlcontrolsan experiment run to eliminate a rival explanation
limitationlimitationswhat the paper says its evidence cannot support
mechanismmechanismshow the reported effect is said to come about
methodmethodhow the paper produced its evidence
phenomenonphenomenonthe effect or regularity under study
sensesensesa distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it

The paper

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claim_relations 2 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 1 · concepts 5 · content_tags 40 · controls 1 · limitations 3 · mechanisms 2 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 3

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facettagfieldconf.whose words
claim_typeexistence
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claim_typethe paper's words
phenomenonsocial representation in medial prefrontal cortex
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phenomenonthe paper's words
methodelectrophysiology
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methodthe paper's words
mechanismsmechanisms
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mechanisms[0]the tagger's words
mechanismsmechanisms
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mechanisms[1]the tagger's words
limitationsThe social/nonsocial distinction is a distinction between two sets of odours.
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what this limits: any claim that this mPFC activity encodes social information: the tuning measure is the normalised odor-evoked response magnitude, and it was higher for male and female cues than for all nonsocial odors
limitations[0]1.0the tagger's words
limitationsTwo of the three behavioural measures did not differ between social and nonsocial stimuli.
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what this limits: any behavioural evidence that the mice treated social cues differently: orientation probability was higher for social cues, while response latency and the stimulus-evoked increase in locomotion did not significantly differ
limitations[1]1.0the tagger's words
limitationsThe paper's central quantity is a log ratio of distances between activity patterns.
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what this limits: any social distinction index quoted from this work: it was calculated to quantify the separation between the representations of social and nonsocial stimuli for each mouse
limitations[2]1.0the tagger's words
controlsbaseline firing rate and locomotion as explanations for the elevated noise
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eliminates: the reading that the knockouts' higher baseline noise is a rate or movement artefact · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held
controls[0]1.0the tagger's words
conceptssocial distinction index
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concepts[0]the paper's words
conceptsnonsocial odors
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concepts[1]the paper's words
conceptsodor-evoked response magnitude
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concepts[2]the paper's words
conceptsseparation
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also in: separation
concepts[3]the paper's words
conceptsbaseline noise levels
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concepts[4]the paper's words
sensesa social stimulus, here - AN ODOUR FROM A CONSPECIFIC: the tuning measure is odor-evoked response magnitude, higher for male and female cues than for all nonsocial odors regardless of odor identity, so every 'social' difference reported is a difference between two sets of smells
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senses[0]1.0the tagger's words
sensesthe social distinction index - A LOG RATIO OF POPULATION DISTANCES: introduced to quantify the separation between social and nonsocial representations per mouse, so a phrase that reads as a faculty names a ratio between distances among activity patterns - and the paper prints the formula beside the name
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senses[1]1.0the tagger's words
sensesthe behavioural evidence - ONE DIFFERENCE OUT OF THREE MEASURES: orientation probability was higher for social cues while response latency and locomotion increase did not significantly differ, so the animals' overt behaviour separates the categories on one axis and not on two
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senses[2]1.0the tagger's words
claim_relationsextends → prior work on experience-dependent divergence of conspecific sex representations in hypothalamus and medial amygdala
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claim_relations[0]the tagger's words
claim_relationsbuilds-on → Lazaro et al., "Reduced prefrontal synaptic connectivity and disturbed oscillatory population dynamics in the CNTNAP2 model of autism" (bioRxiv 2018)
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claim_relations[1]the tagger's words
concept_edgesseparation —operationalised-as→ social distinction index
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strength of the relation: 1
concept_edges[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsFriedman test
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also in: Friedman test
content_tags.statistics[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsWilcoxon signed-rank test
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content_tags.statistics[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsANOVA
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also in: ANOVA
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content_tagst-test
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also in: t-test
content_tags.statistics[3]the tagger's words
content_tagschi-squared
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also in: chi-squared
content_tags.statistics[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsstandardized residuals
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content_tags.statistics[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsz-score
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also in: z-score
content_tags.statistics[6]the tagger's words
content_tagsBonferroni correction
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content_tags.statistics[7]the tagger's words
content_tagsLevene's test
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also in: Levene's test
content_tags.statistics[8]the tagger's words
content_tagsprincipal component analysis
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content_tags.statistics[9]the tagger's words
content_tagscross-validation
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content_tags.statistics[10]the tagger's words
content_tagsmultiple regression
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content_tags.statistics[11]the tagger's words
content_tagsmaximum likelihood classification
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content_tags.statistics[12]the tagger's words
content_tagsstandard error of the mean
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content_tags.statistics[13]the tagger's words
content_tagsIn the mouse medial prefrontal cortex, nearly a quarter of recorded units were selective for social odours, twice as many as were selective for nonsocial odours or showed mixed responses.
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content_tags.findings[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe mPFC population code is organised by social versus nonsocial category rather than by odour identity or valence: responses to the two social cues were more similar to each other than to any nonsocial odour.
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content_tags.findings[1]the tagger's words
content_tagsAverage unit tuning was stronger for both male and female social cues than for any of the three nonsocial odours, independent of odour identity.
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content_tags.findings[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsIn wild-type mice the social distinction index rose significantly from the first to the second recording day, showing experience-dependent refinement of the social representation.
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content_tags.findings[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsCntnap2 knockout mice showed no experience-dependent change: their social distinction index was unchanged between the two recording sessions.
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content_tags.findings[4]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe autism-model deficit is specific to categorisation rather than to stimulus encoding: single-odour decoding was equally accurate in both genotypes, but social/nonsocial category decoding was significantly worse in Cntnap2 knockouts.
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content_tags.findings[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsBaseline (ongoing) population activity was noisier in Cntnap2 knockout mice than in wild-type littermates, with the two genotypes almost completely non-overlapping on this measure.
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content_tags.findings[6]the tagger's words
content_tagsMean baseline firing rates of mPFC units were higher in Cntnap2 knockout mice than in wild-type littermates.
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content_tags.findings[7]the tagger's words
content_tagsAcross both genotypes, the level of baseline neuronal noise was strongly negatively correlated with the social distinction index.
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content_tags.findings[8]the tagger's words
content_tagsBaseline cortical noise predicted how much a mouse's social representation refined with experience: higher noise went with a smaller day-to-day gain in the social distinction index.
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content_tags.findings[9]the tagger's words
content_tagsThe neural preference for social cues was not explained by behaviour: latency to orient and stimulus-evoked locomotion did not differ between social and nonsocial odours.
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content_tags.findings[10]the tagger's words
content_tagssocial distinction index
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content_tags.definitions[0]the tagger's words
content_tagsJensen-Shannon divergence
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content_tags.definitions[1]the tagger's words
content_tagscortical noise
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content_tags.definitions[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsunit tuning
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also in: unit tuning
content_tags.definitions[3]the tagger's words
content_tagsevoked firing rate
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content_tags.variables[3]the tagger's words
content_tagscortical noise level
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content_tags.variables[4]the tagger's words
content_tagslocomotion level
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content_tags.variables[5]the tagger's words
content_tagsn = 194 — number of mPFC single units recorded in the first cohort of six mice
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content_tags.quantities[0]the tagger's words
content_tags44% — proportion of recorded mPFC units that responded to at least one odour stimulus
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content_tags.quantities[1]the tagger's words
content_tags51% — proportion of responsive units that responded to only one specific stimulus
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content_tags.quantities[2]the tagger's words
content_tagsfrom 44% on day 1 to 58% on day 2 — rise in the share of non-responsive units in Cntnap2 knockout mice across the two sessions
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content_tags.quantities[3]the tagger's words
content_tags269 / 237 — total units recorded in Cntnap2 knockout mice versus wild-type littermates across both days
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content_tags.quantities[4]the tagger's words
content_tags75% — variance in population activity captured by the first two principal components in the example projection
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content_tags.quantities[5]the tagger's words
content_tagssocial = 98.33 ± 1.05, nonsocial = 87.22 ± 3.03, clean air = 65 ± 7.63 — mean probability of an odour-evoked orientation response by stimulus class
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content_tags.quantities[6]the tagger's words
content_tagst(103) = 3.285, P < 0.01 — test of the higher evoked response magnitude to social versus nonsocial stimuli
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content_tags.quantities[7]the tagger's words

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