Aggression experience and observation drive shared behavioural and neural changes
6 affiliations
- 1Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
- 2Princeton Neuroscience Institute
- 3Columbia University
- 4Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
- 5Princeton University
- 6Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. [email protected]
Abstract
The ability to observe the social behavior of others and use observed information to bias future action is a fundamental building block of social cognition 1,2 . A foundational question is whether social observation and experience engage common circuit mechanisms that enable behavioral change. While classic studies on social learning have shown that aggressive behaviors can be learned through observation 3 , it remains unclear whether aggression observation promotes persistent neural changes that generalize to new contexts. Here, to directly compare the effects of aggression experience and observation at brain-wide scale, we develop a strategy to perform large-scale cell-type specific recordings across subcortical networks for social behavior control and learning. We record longitudinally while animals “train” through direct experience or observation, then probe shared differences in behavior and neural activity in a novel “hard” aggression context. Using supervised and unsupervised methods for behavioral quantification, we detect unique signatures of a shared behavioral strategy not present in animals with no training. During observation, we find widespread activation that mimics experience in networks for behavior generation, with critical differences in signals associated with reward and threat learning. After observation, we observe that changes persist into the novel aggression context, with increased similarity in the neural dynamics between experience and observation groups. Network-level modeling reveals persistent shared changes to a core aggression network, with widespread decoupling of inhibition from a key hypothalamic output region. This demonstrates that “experience-like” activity during observation can recruit a shared plasticity mechanism that biases behavior toward adaptive defensive strategies in new contexts.
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BibTeX
@article{iravedra2026aggression,
title = {{Aggression experience and observation drive shared behavioural and neural changes}},
author = {Jorge Iravedra and Eartha Mae Guthman and Dexter Tsin and Polina Cherepanova and Lenca Cuturela and Edgar J. Ocasio-Arce and Jonathan W. Pillow and Annegret L. Falkner},
journal = {Nature},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1038/s41586-026-11217-9},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11217-9},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Aggression experience and observation drive shared behavioural and neural changes
AU - Jorge Iravedra
AU - Eartha Mae Guthman
AU - Dexter Tsin
AU - Polina Cherepanova
AU - Lenca Cuturela
AU - Edgar J. Ocasio-Arce
AU - Jonathan W. Pillow
AU - Annegret L. Falkner
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
JO - Nature
DO - 10.1038/s41586-026-11217-9
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11217-9
AB - The ability to observe the social behavior of others and use observed information to bias future action is a fundamental building block of social cognition 1,2 . A foundational question is whether social observation and experience engage common circuit mechanisms that enable behavioral change. While classic studies on social learning have shown that aggressive behaviors can be learned through observation 3 , it remains unclear whether aggression observation promotes persistent neural changes that generalize to new contexts. Here, to directly compare the effects of aggression experience and observation at brain-wide scale, we develop a strategy to perform large-scale cell-type specific recordings across subcortical networks for social behavior control and learning. We record longitudinally while animals “train” through direct experience or observation, then probe shared differences in behavior and neural activity in a novel “hard” aggression context. Using supervised and unsupervised methods for behavioral quantification, we detect unique signatures of a shared behavioral strategy not present in animals with no training. During observation, we find widespread activation that mimics experience in networks for behavior generation, with critical differences in signals associated with reward and threat learning. After observation, we observe that changes persist into the novel aggression context, with increased similarity in the neural dynamics between experience and observation groups. Network-level modeling reveals persistent shared changes to a core aggression network, with widespread decoupling of inhibition from a key hypothalamic output region. This demonstrates that “experience-like” activity during observation can recruit a shared plasticity mechanism that biases behavior toward adaptive defensive strategies in new contexts.
SN - 0028-0836
SN - 1476-4687
ER -