Dominant mice can be humbled and wimps made mighty by altering the strength of electrical connections in their brain. The crucial connections dictating a mouse’s place in the social hierarchy appear to sit in the part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), responsible for emotion and decision-making. To investigate the impact of the mPFC on social ranking, Hailan Hu of the Chinese Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai and her colleagues first worked out the social hierarchy of mice through challenges between pairs of the animals in transparent tubes. When the mice came face to face, the subordinate animal would retreat and back out of the tube.
