Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Social affiliation is a vital survival strategy that promotes well-being across species. While innate threats consistently trigger affiliation, it remains unclear whether learned threats engage the same affiliative systems. Here, we report that an auditory conditioned stimulus induced affiliation in mice. In same-sex dyads, mice subjected to auditory fear conditioning increased proximity during presentation of the conditioned stimulus (CS). This CS-evoked affiliation was independent of freezing levels, required familiarity between partners, and depended on intact basolateral amygdala-to-ventral hippocampus inputs and oxytocin signaling. These findings suggest that neural pathways activated by learned and innate threats converge on shared social-affiliation circuitry.
Authors: Wataru Ito, Alexei Morozov
Institutions: Virginia Tech, Carilion Clinic
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: National Institutes of Health
OpenAlex ID: W7128912443