Social interactions powerfully impact the brain and the body, but high-resolution descriptions of these important physical interactions and their neural correlates are lacking. Currently, most studies rely on labor-intensive methods such as manual annotation. Scalable and objective tracking methods are required to understand the neural circuits underlying social behavior. Here we describe a hardware/software system and analysis pipeline that combines 3D videography, deep learning, physical modeling, and GPU-accelerated robust optimization, with automatic analysis of neuronal receptive fields recorded in interacting mice. Our system ("3DDD Social Mouse Tracker") is capable of fully automatic multi-animal tracking with minimal errors (including in complete darkness) during complex, spontaneous social encounters, together with simultaneous electrophysiological recordings. We capture posture dynamics of multiple unmarked mice with high spatiotemporal precision (~2 mm, 60 frames/s). A statistical model that relates 3D behavior and neural activity reveals multiplexed 'social receptive fields' of neurons in barrel cortex. Our approach could be broadly useful for neurobehavioral studies of multiple animals interacting in complex low-light environments.
© 2022. The Author(s).