Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Social Behavior in Health and Disease

Social behavior is a fundamental output of brain function, and its disruption is a defining feature of many neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric conditions. Yet the cellular and molecular logic by which brains detect, evaluate, and respond to social cues — and how this logic fails in disease — remains incompletely understood. Unlike collections focused on a single disorder, this Research Topic centres on social behavior as the primary phenotype of interest, seeking to uncover the conserved and species-specific cellular principles that govern how brains compute social information, and how these break down across a range of neurological and psychiatric conditions. A growing body of work across tractable animal models — rodents, zebrafish, songbirds, chicks, and invertebrates — has begun to map the synaptic and circuit machinery that supports individual recognition, social memory, social reward, and the attribution of social salience. Critically, much of this machinery is shared across phylogeny, making comparative approaches a powerful tool for identifying core mechanisms that clinical research alone cannot resolve.

This Research Topic brings together studies that dissect the cellular, synaptic, and circuit mechanisms underlying social behavior in health and disease. We welcome contributions addressing, but not limited to:

• Synaptic plasticity and neuromodulatory systems (GABAergic, dopaminergic, oxytocinergic, glutamatergic) shaping social behavior across development
• Molecular and genetic determinants of social phenotypes in animal models of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, and mood disorders
• Cell-type-specific and interneuron contributions to social circuits
• Activity-dependent maturation of social brain networks during critical periods
• Comparative and cross-species approaches to social neuroscience, including non-rodent vertebrate models (avian, zebrafish) and invertebrates
• Pharmacological, environmental, and epigenetic perturbations affecting social behavior at the cellular and circuit level
• Novel methodologies — in vivo imaging, electrophysiology, optogenetics, chemogenetics, single-cell transcriptomics, organoids — applied to social circuit function

We accept Original Research, Brief Research Reports, Reviews, Mini Reviews, and Perspectives. Contributions should address cellular, molecular, or circuit-level mechanisms; studies focused exclusively on behavioral phenotyping or clinical populations without a mechanistic component fall outside the scope of this collection.