Wöhr Markus, Schwarting Rainer K W
Experimental and Physiological Psychology, Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany.
Behav Neurosci. 2008 Apr;122(2):310-30. doi: 10.1037/0735-7044.122.2.310.
In the rat, variations in maternal care affect the development of stable individual differences in anxiety-related behavior. Here, it was asked whether such experience-dependent differences can be detected already during early life. As a measure for anxiety in pups, isolation-induced ultrasonic vocalizations were used, and their dependency on different maternal behaviors, namely licking, retrieval behavior, and responsiveness to playback of pup calls, was tested. Consistent with reported differences of adult rats with high or low levels of maternal care experienced, the rarely licked offspring appeared to be more anxious, since they emitted more calls when separated from their mother and litter. Based on these findings, it was examined whether infant calling can be used as a predictor of adult anxiety-related behavior. Results show that infant call emission was negatively correlated with immobility and calling during fear conditioning. These relationships seem to be mediated at least partly by maternal care. In total, measuring ultrasonic vocalizations can provide information about an affective trait of infant and adult rats, which gives the opportunity to study the development of emotionality from early life onward.
在大鼠中，母性关怀的差异会影响焦虑相关行为中稳定个体差异的发展。在此，研究人员探讨了这种依赖经验的差异在生命早期是否就已能被检测到。作为衡量幼崽焦虑程度的指标，研究使用了隔离诱导的超声波发声，并测试了其对不同母性行为的依赖性，即舔舐、找回行为以及对幼崽叫声回放的反应。与报道的经历过高或低水平母性关怀的成年大鼠的差异一致，很少被舔舐的后代似乎更焦虑，因为它们在与母亲和同窝幼崽分离时发出了更多叫声。基于这些发现，研究人员检验了幼崽叫声是否可作为成年焦虑相关行为的预测指标。结果表明，幼崽叫声的发出与恐惧条件反射期间的静止不动和叫声呈负相关。这些关系似乎至少部分由母性关怀介导。总体而言，测量超声波发声可以提供有关幼崽和成年大鼠情感特征的信息，这为从生命早期开始研究情绪发展提供了机会。
