Social deficits are observed in diverse psychiatric disorders, including autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia. We found that mice lacking the excitatory synaptic signaling scaffold IRSp53 (also known as BAIAP2) showed impaired social interaction and communication. Treatment of IRSp53(-/-) mice, which display enhanced NMDA receptor (NMDAR) function in the hippocampus, with memantine, an NMDAR antagonist, or MPEP, a metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 antagonist that indirectly inhibits NMDAR function, normalized social interaction. This social rescue was accompanied by normalization of NMDAR function and plasticity in the hippocampus and neuronal firing in the medial prefrontal cortex. These results, together with the reduced NMDAR function implicated in social impairments, suggest that deviation of NMDAR function in either direction leads to social deficits and that correcting the deviation has beneficial effects.
Journal article
2015-03-01T00:00:00+00:00
18
435 - 443
8
Animals, Animals, Newborn, Case-Control Studies, Cells, Cultured, Excitatory Amino Acid Antagonists, Exploratory Behavior, Feeding Behavior, Gene Expression Regulation, Grooming, Male, Mice, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Mice, Transgenic, Mutation, Nerve Tissue Proteins, Neurons, Receptor, Metabotropic Glutamate 5, Receptors, N-Methyl-D-Aspartate, Recognition, Psychology, Social Behavior Disorders, Vocalization, Animal