Nonlinear hippocampal coding of the pair-bonded partner in prairie voles

Abstract Neural representation of specific opposite-sex partners remains largely unexplored. Using monogamous prairie voles, we demonstrated that partner preference required the ventral hippocampus, in which 3–4 Hz oscillations were enhanced following partner interaction. We identified ventral hippocampal neurons responding selectively to the pair-bonded partner and stranger, which encoded identity-related information in a nonlinear manner, shedding light upon how mammalian brains create distinct neural representations of romantic opposite-sex partners. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Funder Information Declared JST ERATO, JPMJER1801 the Institute for AI and Beyond of the University of Tokyo JSPS KAKENHI, 22K21353, 25K18705, 22KJ1134 AMED Brain/MINDS 2.0, 24wm0625207s0101, 24wm0625401h0001, 24wm0625502s0501 Copyright The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.