SILS-CNS, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Physiol Behav. 2012 Jul 16;106(5):701-6. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2011.12.007. Epub 2011 Dec 21.
Maternal care represents an essential environmental factor during the first post-natal week(s) of rodents and is known to have lasting consequences for neuronal structure, brain function as well as behavioral outcome later in life, including social functions and reward-related processes. Previous experiments have shown that the amount of maternal care received by individual pups varies substantially, even within one litter. During adolescence, mammals display high levels of social play behavior, a rewarding form of social interaction that is of great importance for social and cognitive development. In order to investigate how maternal care influences adaptive social behavior later in life, we here examined whether individual differences in maternal licking and grooming (%LG) received during the first postnatal week affect social play behavior during adolescence. We observed that %LG received by male rats early in life correlates positively with the frequency and duration of pouncing and pinning, the two most characteristic behavioral expressions of social play behavior in rats. The latency to engage in social exploration also correlated with %LG. In female rats we observed no correlation between %LG and any social parameter. The data indicate that subtle variations in maternal care received early in life influence social interactions in male adolescent rats. These changes in social play likely have repercussions for the social development of male rats, suggesting that maternal care can have both direct and indirect effects on the behavioral development of the offspring.
母性照顾代表了啮齿动物产后第一周（s）的一个重要环境因素，已知对神经元结构、大脑功能以及生命后期的行为结果（包括社交功能和与奖励相关的过程）具有持久影响。以前的实验表明，即使在同一个窝中，个体幼崽接受的母性照顾量也有很大差异。在青春期，哺乳动物表现出高水平的社交游戏行为，这是一种有益的社交互动形式，对社交和认知发展非常重要。为了研究母性照顾如何影响生命后期的适应性社交行为，我们在此研究了在产后第一周内接受的个体差异母性舔舐和梳理（%LG）是否会影响青春期的社交游戏行为。我们发现，雄性幼鼠在生命早期接受的%LG 与扑打和钉刺的频率和持续时间呈正相关，扑打和钉刺是大鼠社交游戏行为的两个最典型的行为表现。参与社交探索的潜伏期也与%LG 相关。在雌性大鼠中，我们没有观察到%LG 与任何社交参数之间存在相关性。这些数据表明，生命早期接受的母性照顾的细微差异会影响雄性青春期大鼠的社交互动。社交游戏中的这些变化可能会对雄性大鼠的社交发展产生影响，表明母性照顾对后代的行为发展既有直接影响，也有间接影响。
