Differences in Diffusion-Weighted Imaging and Resting-State Functional Connectivity Between Two Culturally Distinct Populations of Prairie Vole

We used the highly prosocial prairie vole to test the hypothesis that higher-order brain structure—microarchitecture and functional connectivity (FC)—would differ between males from populations with distinctly different levels of prosocial behavior. Specifically, we studied males from Illinois (IL), which display high levels of prosocial behavior, and first generation males from Kansas dams and IL males (KI), which display the lowest level of prosocial behavior and higher aggression. Behavioral differences between these males are associated with overexpression of estrogen receptor alpha in the medial amygdala and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and neuropeptide expression in the paraventricular nucleus.