When We Torture: Moral and Pragmatic Arguments For and Against Torture, and Their Effect on Public Support For Redressing Past and Preventing Future Injustice

Emanuele Castano, Psychology, New School for Social Research

Bernhard Leidner, Psychology, New School for Social Research

Research Grant, 2009

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Violence can take many forms, and it can vary in scale and intensity. This research project focuses on one specific type of violence that is usually perpetrated against a relatively small number of individuals, but surely not less heinous or consequential: torture (Rothenberg, 2003; Skoll, 2008). There are several reasons for focusing on torture. One reason is that it has been a central element in many of the conflicts that have characterized the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in Central and South America, where torture (e.g., Peters, 1984; Staub, 1989) and disappearances (e.g., Argentine National Committee of the Disappeared, 1986) were also central to postconflict attempts to rebuild the countries socially and politically (e.g., Becker, 1986). Furthermore, the recent use of torture by the United States has stirred countless debates, further contributed to already-entrenched divisions in public opinion, and damaged the US’s reputation and moral authority worldwide.

The project aimed specifically to develop an understanding of how the debate over lethal and nonlethal torture against prisoners perpetrated by one’s government affects people’s opinion about how to punish perpetrators and compensate victims, and whether and how to prevent torture in the future. This is considered an important step, for public opinion will inform individual and group behavior and thus affect policy.

Appealing to the moral and good in human nature may be worthwhile and effective after all, and may help strengthen the normative power of international humanitarian law.

Broadly speaking, arguments against torture fall into one of two categories. First, torture can be opposed on the basis of pragmatic arguments, considering cost-benefit analyses regarding its efficacy (e.g., torture does not work) or its repercussions (e.g., loss of reputation). Second, torture can be opposed on the basis of moral arguments (e.g., torture violates human rights). We conducted three experimental studies investigating how these two types of arguments affect US citizens’ attitudes toward US-committed torture. In Study 1, Americans expressed stronger demands for redressing the injustice of US-committed torture after they were presented with moral rather than pragmatic arguments or no arguments against torture. Study 2 replicated this finding and showed that the effects of moral arguments against torture on Americans’ opposition to torture further depend on how attached someone is to his or her country, and how much someone glorifies his or her country. Specifically, moral arguments increased justice demands among those who typically react most defensively to wrongdoings committed by their own country: people who are strongly attached to their country and strongly glorify it. Finally, Study 3 demonstrated that the effect of moral arguments against torture on justice demands and support for torture among strongly glorifying Americans is driven by moral outrage and empathy but not guilt. That is, moral arguments against torture made strongly glorifying Americans more outraged about the behavior of their own country, and made them more empathic towards the victims of torture; this increase in outrage and empathy then made them more opposed to torture.

To conclude, moral arguments against torture committed by one’s own country seem to increase demands for justice and decrease support for torture, precisely in those people who are most problematic from the perspective of social justice and peaceful intergroup relations—that is, people who strongly glorify their own country. Rather than being a naïve or hopelessly idealistic approach, appealing to the moral and good in human nature may be worthwhile and effective after all, and may help strengthen the normative power of international humanitarian law.

Epigenetic Influences on the Development of the Serotonin System: A Mechanism of Risk for Chronic Aggressive Behaviors in Humans?

Linda Booij, Clinical Psychology, University of Montreal

Research Grant, 2010

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Many studies have shown that what happens early in development influences the way the brain develops and someone’s risk to develop behavioral problems later on, including chronic aggression. Studies in animals have shown that adverse factors during a mother’s pregnancy (e.g., malnutrition) or adverse experiences early in life (e.g. child abuse, bullying) can influence the way the child’s genes are expressed through “DNA methylation,” a process in which genes are marked with a chemical coating. This changes the development of certain brain regions and may have consequences for the way the child will develop emotionally, socially, and cognitively later in life.

In studies supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, we studied how early adversity affects the development of the brain, behavior, and the expression of genes that regulate serotonin, a brain chemical important for aggression. Two studies were supported: a study in animals and a study in boys and girls who were 15 years old.

In the animal study, we investigated how stress in rats during the adolescent period affected the brain and neurochemical serotonin, as well as aggression and anxiety. We used the so-called social intruder paradigm, in which a rat is placed in the cage of another rat, thereby creating interpersonal conflict, which is considered an animal analogue to bullying). We used a technique called immunohistochemistry to study the consequences of social defeat in adolescence for the density of the serotonin transporter in the brain in adulthood. We found that social defeat in adolescence increased serotonin transporter density in part of the prefrontal cortex when the rats were adults (Tao et al, 2017). Anxiety was also increased, with no effects of aggression. These results were somewhat different than what was previously observed when adverse experiences occurred earlier in life, and suggests that the effects of adverse experiences on brain, serotonin and behavior may depend on the specific timing of the stressor.

Together, these studies suggest that early adversity is associated with the development of the brain and with the regulation of the serotonin transporter.

In the human study, we studied the impact of early adversity on brain development, DNA methylation in genes that regulate serotonin, and on behaviors. For this study, we tested teenagers that had been followed since birth, and thus we had good documentation of their home environment and childhood experiences. Individuals were genetically identical twins, which allowed us to look at specific environmental factors and control for genetic effects. All individuals underwent brain imaging in combination with an emotion processing task to measure how their brain responded to various types of emotional information. A DNA sample was taken to study DNA methylation.

We found that, while controlling for genetics, prenatal (before-birth) factors but not postnatal (after-birth) factors predicted adolescent brain development. We also found that environmental-induced changes in epigenetic regulation in the serotonin transporter were predictive of neural activation in the Orbitofrontal Cortex and the way this brain region was connected to other regions (e.g. the amygdala) of the so-called limbic network. Associations were only observed when the brain was processing sad and/or fearful stimuli but not when processing angry stimuli.

Together, these studies suggest that early adversity is associated with the development of the brain and with the regulation of the serotonin transporter. Serotonin transporter density (animals) and methylation (humans) was more linked to regulation of sadness/fear than of aggression. The specific effects on brain, expression of genes, and behaviors may also depend on timing and/or type of the exposure to adverse events, genetics, and/or a combination of these.

Christian Martyrs and the Making of an Islamic Society in the Post-Conquest Period

Christian C. Sahner, History, Princeton University

Dissertation Fellowship, 2014

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This dissertation examines the role of state-sanctioned violence against Christians during the Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid periods. It explores a neglected group of Christian saints (often called “neomartyrs”) who died between the seventh and ninth centuries AD. They hailed from practically every corner of the greater Middle East where Christian majorities lived alongside Muslim minorities, including Spain, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the Caucasus. As such, their lives were recorded in a range of languages, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Armenian, Georgian, and Syriac. The dissertation pairs these texts with Muslim sources, including legal and historical literature, to provide a three-dimensional and balanced portrait of Islamization, Arabization, and official violence in the post-conquest period.

Seen from this perspective, there were three main types of martyrs. The first and most numerous were Christian converts to Islam who then returned to Christianity. Because apostasy was considered a capital offense under Islamic law, they could face execution if found guilty. The second group was made up of Muslims from entirely Muslim backgrounds who converted to Christianity. The third consisted of Christians who publicly blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad, usually before high-ranking Muslim officials.

We cannot understand early Islam unless we see it as a minority religion interacting with older, larger, and more established communities of non-Muslims scattered across the Middle East, in particular, Christians.

The dissertation argues that violence played an important role in regulating relations between the two communities, but it was limited in its scope and aimed at two specific goals: first, to secure the primacy of Islam at a time when Muslims were outnumbered by their non-Muslim subjects; and second, to forge boundaries between religious groups at a time of considerable social and confessional fluidity. It argues that monks wrote biographies of martyrs, in turn, in an attempt to stem the tide of conversion and to protest the effects of Arabization on their communities. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that martyrdom peaked during the first fifty years of ‘Abbasid rule (ca. 750–800) as old Muslims, recent Muslim converts, and non-Muslims first began to interact as members of a shared society, and not as rulers and subjects in a divided post-conquest society.

The dissertation represents a contribution to a growing field of literature on the transition from late antiquity to the early Islamic period. As such, it seeks to situate the rise of Islam within the late ancient milieu in which it was born, as well as through the non-Muslim communities it interacted with as it spread. Throughout, it suggests that we cannot understand early Islam unless we see it as a minority religion interacting with older, larger, and more established communities of non-Muslims scattered across the Middle East, in particular, Christians.

On Traumatic Modernities: Forced Migration and Nakh Cultural Memory Along Caucasus Borderlands

Rebecca Gould, Humanities, Yale-NUS College Singapore

Research Grant, 2014

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My research for “On Traumatic Modernities,” carried out mostly in the Caucasus, yielded several new insights as well as concrete outputs. My findings include the following:

1. Migration narratives from the 1860s continue to inform the post-Soviet experience of migration.

2. Georgians recognize the role of Muslim displacements within their literary histories and in cultural memory, even though the documentary record leaves a stronger record of solidarity across religious divides.

3. Muslims from the Caucasus link their histories of displacement with Muslims from elsewhere in the Islamic world, including Central Asia.

My conversations with local scholars in Georgia and throughout the Caucasus enable me to probe the ongoing legacies of the violence that constitutes forced migration.

These findings emerge from the comparative perspective I brought to the study of the 1944 Soviet deportations. I spoke with many survivors of the deportation (particularly those who reside on the Daghestan/Georgian border), and documented their stories and experience for future publications. Finally, my conversations with local scholars in Georgia and throughout the Caucasus enable me to probe the ongoing legacies of the violence that constitutes forced migration.

This research has also been disseminated in general interest publications. Among the general interest publications is a widely syndicated piece on the concept of forced migration (hijra) within Islam. First published in 2015 as “The Islamic State’s Perversion of Hijra,” Project Syndicate, this essay was subsequently translated into Arabic, Amharic, Chinese, French, German, Polish, and Serbian, and republished in The Globe & Mail (Canada); Qantara.de (in German and Arabic); The Bangkok Post; Japan Times; Zaman France; L’Orient-Le Jour; La revista de prensa ‘Tribuna Libre’; Reporters: Quotidien national d’information; Media24: Portail d’information économique et politique du Maroc; The Jakarta Post; The Reporter (Ethiopia); Facts & Arts; and The Montreal Review (entitled “Hijra before ISIS”).

Bibliography

1. Gould, R. (2018). Memorializing Akhundzadeh: Contradictory Cosmopolitanism and Post-Soviet Narcissism in Old Tbilisi. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.(https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2018. 1439397).

2. Gould, R., Shikhaliev, S. (2017). Beyond the Taqlīd/Ijtihād Dichotomy: Daghestani Legal Thought under Russian Rule. Islamic Law and Society, 24(1-2), 142-169.

3. Gould, R. (2016). Finding Bazorkin: A Journey from Anthropology to Literature.  Anthropology and Humanism, 41(1), 86-101.

4. Gould, R. (2015). Ijtihd against Madhhab: Legal Hybridity and the Meanings of Modernity in Early Modern Daghestan. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 57(1), 35-66.

Of Rebels, Spirits, and Social Engineers: The Problems with Ending Female Genital Cutting

Saida Hodzic, Women and Gender Studies, George Mason University

Research Grant, 2009

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My research project, “Of Rebels, Spirits, and Social Engineers: The Problems with Ending Female Genital Cutting,” was motivated by a desire to understand a paradox: whereas the practices of female genital cutting incited passionate Western responses and desires to end the practice, African efforts to end cutting were largely disregarded. For many decades, public and scholarly debates about cutting proceeded on such a narrow track that they overlooked radical transformations across Africa. Meanwhile, African organizations—mostly NGOs, often in collaboration with governments and donors—have worked on ending cutting for decades. The role of Africans in transforming and ending cutting was both unacknowledged and unexamined.

My book The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs (2017) argues that the political and ethical concerns about cutting to which we must seriously attend are not those of Western subjects, but of the African women and men who are most involved in and affected by anti-cutting efforts. Based on sixteen years of ethnographic and archival research in Ghana, the United States, and Western Europe, the book analyzes Ghanaian anti-cutting campaigns and their national and transnational dimensions. My analysis shows that Ghanaians respond to medical and legal campaigns not by holding onto the so-called tradition of cutting, but by reconfiguring how they are governed. I illuminate how rural women end cutting, while simultaneously critiquing the violence of extraction that has made their bodies vulnerable. I also detail how the NGO activists who make anti-cutting laws eventually deem them violent and unjust. The book has received the Michelle Rosaldo book prize.

I am currently working on highlighting implications of my research for policies affecting African immigrants in the global North as well as writing about humanitarianism, refugees, and asylum.

My research shows both the promises and the problems associated with anchoring a future for African immigrants in the global North in the conceptualization of Africa as a solution.

As I was completing the research, I noticed a new trend in Western treatments of African NGOs and their anti-cutting campaigns. In recent years, Western governments and NGOs have started to look at select African campaigns as model solutions and best practices for ending cutting that can be emulated in the global North. My research shows both the promises and the problems associated with anchoring a future for African immigrants in the global North in the conceptualization of Africa as a solution. African campaigns appear attractive because they are believed to be more empowering and led by the affected women themselves. My research shows that they are neither. When Western governments look to Africa as a solution to its problems, they obscure the fact that African anti-cutting campaigns are also oppressive, even if they are designed by Africans and claim to be empowering.

The reason why such oppressive campaigns are less damaging in Ghana is that Ghanaians have more say over how they are governed than African immigrants in the West. While Ghanaian NGO workers and civil servants ultimately oppose the most repressive legal mechanisms for ending cutting and reign in the power of the law, I argue that their opposition is grounded in locally meaningful ethical relations that structure how Ghanaians live with one another and relate to the state. The problem is that such checks on state power are not conceptualized as best practices and are not considered a part of the solutions package. I want to show that what African immigrants in the West might need are not simulations of African campaigns against cutting, but a different distribution of power and greater say over the policies that affect them.

Bibliography

1. Hodzic, S. (2017). The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs. University of California Press.

2. Hodzic, S. (2016). The Ends of Cutting in Ghana: Blood Loss, Scarcity, and Slow Harm after NGOs. American Ethnologist, 43(4): 636-649.

3. Hodzic, S. (2013). Ascertaining Deadly Harms: Aesthetics and Politics of Global Evidence. Cultural Anthropology, 28(1): 86-109.

The Diffusion of Lethal and Nonlethal Violence in Gang Networks

Andrew V. Papachristos, Sociology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Research Grant, 2010, 2011

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Gangs conjure a general sense of fear among the public and policymakers alike. In part, this fear stems from the nature of gang activities, which, as the term “street gang” suggests, most often occur on the street or other public spaces. What’s more, gang violence is more likely to involve the use of firearms and involve a greater number of participants. Drive-by shootings, for example, harm not just those struck by bullets, but also other residents of the community who fear for their family’s safety, lock their doors, or otherwise withdraw from community life.

In truth, however, the majority of gang violence is far from random. Gang violence most often occurs among gang members themselves, the result of prior intergroup conflict resulting from disputes over status, honor, or respect. Criminologists and sociologists have long known that violence tends to concentrate within certain populations and geographic locations, but a growing body of research finds that gun and gang violence is even more severely concentrated within social networks. This HFG-funded research explored the role that social networks play in the decidedly nonrandom nature of gang violence in two U.S. cities: Chicago and Boston. In particular, this project analyzed the ways in which gang networks contribute to the spread of violence both within a population of gangs and gang members as well as outwards into the general public. The main findings of this research underscore the importance of networks in understanding the diffusion of gun and gang violence.

The most important drivers of gang violence appear to be the ways in which reciprocity and status-seeking violence unfold within such conflict networks.

This project’s main findings can be summarized as follows:

1. Fatal and nonfatal gun violence is severely concentrated within small social networks.

   One of the most significant findings from this research is just how concentrated gun violence is within social networks. For example, in a study of one high-crime Boston community, this research found that 85 percent of all fatal and nonfatal gunshot injuries occurred within a network comprising just 763 individuals—less than 5 percent of the community’s totally population. Moreover, this study demonstrated the gunshot victims could be located with fairly high accuracy within such networks, and that network maps can provide excellent visualizations of such risk within a population.

2. Exposure to gun violence matters—a lot.

   Not only does gun violence concentrate within social networks, but exposure to violence in one’s social network matters in predicting subsequent victimization; in fact, it matters more than more traditional individual and neighborhood-level risk factors. Estimates from this research suggest that the closer one is to a gunshot victim, the higher one’s own probability of getting shot. More precisely, estimates from the Boston study suggest that each handshake away one is from a gunshot victim reduces one’s probability of being a victim by approximately 25 percent. The effect is greater for gang members, in large part because being in a gang sharply determines the contours of one’s network. Gang networks, then, play an important role in shaping how risk is distributed within social networks, especially as it relates to exposure to gun violence.

3. The corner and the crew: the importance of geographic space and gang networks

   The results from a comparative study of gang violence in Chicago and Boston found that one of the most important factors influencing observed patterns of gang violence—literally, who shoots whom—involves larger networks of conflict and violence between gangs. Gangs are not myopic, and gangs (especially in Chicago) have long organizational memories. In both Chicago and Boston, one of the most robust predictors of gang violence is the network structure of any gang’s past conflicts and battles. Put another way, understanding a gang’s prior pattern of conflict and violence goes far in predicting whom the gang will engage next. Such gang networks are influenced by geographic space as well. But the most important drivers of gang violence appear to be the ways in which reciprocity and status-seeking violence unfold within such conflict networks. In fact, in both Chicago and Boston, individual incidents of violence between gangs string together to form a social network that appears to exert enduring effects on subsequent acts of violence.

Bibliography

1. Papachristos, A.V., A.A. Braga, and D. Hureau, Social Networks and the Risk of Gunshot Injury. Journal of Urban Health, 2012. 89(6): p. 992-1003.

2. Papachristos, A.V., D.M. Hureau, and A.A. Braga, The Corner and the Crew: The Influence of Geography and Social Networks on Gang Violence. American Sociological Review, 2013. 78(3): p. 417-447.

Entertaining, Informing, Discussing: How do Media Spread Messages of Peace and Violence?

Elizabeth Levy Paluck, Psychology, Princeton University

Research Grant, 2009

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We test the causal effects of a democracy promotion radio intervention launched by an international nongovernmental organization (INGO) in South Sudan. The serial radio episodes addressed topics that are relatively new to listeners, regarding democratic institutions and procedures such as anticorruption law and elections. Other radio episodes addressed topics about which listeners likely have pre-existing positions, such as the role of women in politics and the meaning of citizenship.

The INGO augmented the radio intervention with face-to-face, formally moderated listener group discussions regarding the program content. We randomly assigned these different aspects of the radio intervention (“treatments”) in a hybrid lab-field study. Specifically, we randomly selected small groups of neighbors and friends in the capital city Juba, and randomly assigned these groups to experience one or more treatment (different radio episode topics, moderated discussion) over the course of a full day. We measure learning, attitude and behavioral shifts by comparing listening groups to no-treatment controls and to one another.

Explanations for the influence of this radio-inspired discussion are suggested by psychological theories regarding the social influence of listening partners.

We find that encouraging discussion about the radio program has substantively and statistically significant effects on learning about the meaning of new democratic concepts and institutions. Discussion, and particularly discussion of the relevant radio episodes on democracy, improves attitudes toward democratic issues, but discussion of women’s involvement in politics causes more negative attitudes toward these issues. We also find substantively and statistically significant behavioral shifts caused by discussion in terms of donating money to civil society organizations (CSOs) and actual reporting of corruption and volunteering with CSOs up to one month following the experiment.

Explanations for the influence of this radio-inspired discussion are suggested by psychological theories regarding the social influence of listening partners. However, listeners’ perceived partner agreement with the radio program has mixed effects; we only find an association between treatment effects and perceived partner agreement with respect to attitudinal persuasion.

Finally, the gender of participants and the gender composition of listening groups conditions our average treatment effects in significant and relatively patterned ways. Women respond more positively to messages about women in politics and citizenship, and are less likely to be negatively affected by discussion about these topics. Listening to radio content about women in politics and citizenship also motivates greater behavioral responses among women and among listening groups that include women, in terms of donating money and requesting the contact information for CSOs. However, women are not more likely than the overall sample to donate to women’s causes.

Two Ways Out: Christianity, Security, and Mara Salvatrucha

Kevin Lewis O'Neill, Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto

Research Grant, 2010, 2012

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This project, based on fieldwork in Guatemala, tracked the growing world of transnational street gangs from the perspective of gang ministry. These criminal organizations originated among Central American immigrants in Los Angeles, California, during the gang wars of the 1980s. Since then, United States deportation policies have transported (and, in turn, expanded) these gangs back to Central America, with one of the strongest networks forming in postwar Guatemala. Tens of thousands of men and women now smuggle drugs, participate in human trafficking, and control prison systems.

Religion is a social fact deeply bound to the practice and to the construction of security.

While much research focuses on why young men and women join these gangs, this project looked instead at one of the only ways out: Christian conversion. This curious loophole in gang membership raised a guiding research question: How and to what extent does gang ministry exemplify Christianity’s growing entanglement with the geopolitics of Central American security? The answer to this question proved significant, with an array of Christian-inflected research sites contributing to efforts at Central American security. These included prison chaplaincy programs that target active gang members as well as back-to-work programs for ex–gang members. One overall observation proved critical. A range of scholars (in several disciplines) understand religion and security as distinct: religion as a threat to security or religion as a solution to insecurity. Yet, my fieldwork makes it clear that religion, observed here through various manifestations of Christianity, is neither the enemy nor the antidote. Rather, religion is a social fact deeply bound to the practice and to the construction of security, to the very idea of what it means to be secure.

Bibliography

1. 2015. Secure the Soul: Christian Piety and Gang Prevention in Guatemala. University of California Press.

Competitive Intervention and its Consequences for Civil Wars

Noel Anderson, Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dissertation Fellowship, 2015

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This project explores two interrelated puzzles about external intervention and internal war. The first asks why rebels, governments, and third-party interveners often continue to invest in costly and protracted conflicts rather than sue for peace and a negotiated settlement. The second considers the consequences of these behaviors for temporal variation in the average duration and global prevalence of civil wars. A central finding that emerges concerns the critical role of competitive intervention—two-sided, simultaneous military assistance from different third party states to both government and rebel combatants—in the dynamics and intractability of civil wars across time and around the globe.

Developing a generalizable theory of competitive intervention, the project explains the distortionary effects this form of external meddling has on domestic bargaining processes, describes the unique strategic dilemmas it entails for third-party interveners, and links its varying prevalence to international systemic change.

It uncovers a feature of this form of intervention—namely, that “not losing” is often more important than “winning.”

In doing so, it moves beyond popular anecdotes about “proxy wars” by deriving theoretically grounded propositions about the strategic logics motivating competitive intervention in civil wars. It also uncovers a heretofore overlooked feature of this form of intervention—namely, that “not losing” is often more important than “winning” from the perspective of third-party interveners under the shadow of inadvertent escalation.

The theory is tested with a mixed-method design that combines statistical analyses of all civil wars fought between 1975 and 2009 with detailed case studies of competitive intervention in Angola (1975–1991) and Afghanistan (1979–1992). The project’s theoretical and empirical results shed new light on the international dimensions of civil war, address ongoing debates concerning the utility of intervention as a conflict management tool, and inform policy prescriptions aimed at resolving some of today’s most violent internal conflicts.

The Neural Circuitry of Aggression, Sex and Sexual Aggression

David J. Anderson, Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience, California Institute of Technology

Research Grant, 2014

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Mating and aggression are innate (or instinctive) behaviors that are performed without training. Interestingly, among animals, these two seemingly different behaviors appear to be inextricably intertwined: aggressive encounters are often associated with mating, when males exhibit their dominance for sexual opportunities. However, male-female interactions are primarily sexual (mating) and male-male interactions tend to be aggressive, while aggression toward females is more often the exception than the norm. What brain mechanisms are responsible for separating sexual behavior toward females, and violent aggression toward males, under normal conditions?

To investigate the brain mechanisms, we used a technique called microendoscopy that allowed us to image deep-brain (hypothalamic) neuronal activity in male mice engaged in social behaviors. We recorded over two hundred neurons on average in each mouse (total 25 mice), and the mice had no trouble fighting or mating because of the microendoscope neural implant.

In sexually and socially experienced adult male mice, neurons were strongly active during interactions with conspecifics, but not with a toy. It was immediately clear that characteristic, yet separate, ensembles of neurons were active during interactions with male or female conspecifics. But surprisingly, in inexperienced adult males, common populations of neurons were activated by both male and female conspecifics. The sex-specific ensembles gradually emerged as the mice acquired social and sexual experience. These observations indicated that interactions with males and females was required for the distinct representations of males and females in the adult mouse brain.

These observations reveal an unexpected requirement of experience for behaviors that were traditionally viewed as "hard-wired" or innate.

We performed another set of experiments where adult male mice were permitted to investigate (touch, smell, etc.) but not mount or attack other female or male mice. In this case, we did not observe female- or male-specific ensembles or divergent representations in the brain, suggesting that sensory exposure itself was insufficient. However, providing male mice with brief sexual experience was sufficient to generate neuronal ensembles that were specific to males and females, divergent neural representations of conspecific sex and aggression towards males. This experiment demonstrated that social interactions are necessary for the formation of male and female specific neuronal ensembles.

These observations reveal an unexpected requirement of experience for behaviors that were traditionally viewed as “hard-wired” or innate. Social experience was required for the formation of neuronal ensembles that themselves control social behavior.

Bibliography

1. Remedios R, Kennedy A, Zelikowsky M, Grewe BF, Schnitzer MJ, Anderson DJ. (2017) Social Behaviour Shapes Hypothalamic Neural Ensemble Representations Of Conspecific Sex. Nature. In Press.

2. Kennedy A, Asahina K, Hoopfer E, Inagaki H, Jung Y, Lee H, Remedios R, Anderson DJ. (2015) Internal States and Behavioral Decision-Making: Toward an Integration of Emotion and Cognition. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol. 79:199-210.