Yang Mu, Loureiro Darren, Kalikhman David, Crawley Jacqueline N
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California Davis School of Medicine California, CA, USA ; Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience, National Institute of Mental Health Bethesda, MD, USA.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2013 Nov 19;7:159. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2013.00159. eCollection 2013.
Adult male mice emit large number of complex ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) when interacting with adult females. Call numbers and call categories differ greatly among inbred mouse strains. Little is known about USV emissions when the social partner departs. To investigate whether call repertoires and call rates are different when the male is interacting with a female and after the removal of the female, we designed a novel male-female social interaction test in which vocalizations were recorded across three phases. During phase 1, the male subject freely interacts with an unfamiliar estrus female mouse in a clean cage for 5 min. During phase 2, the female is removed while the male remains in the cage for 3 min. During phase 3, the same female is returned to the cage to rejoin the male subject mouse for 3 min. C57BL/6J (B6), FVB.129P2-Pde6b(+) Tyr(c-ch)/Ant (FVB), and BTBR T+ tf/J (BTBR) male subject mice were tested in this paradigm. All three strains emitted USVs during their initial interaction with the female partner. When the female was reintroduced in phase 3, numbers of USVs were similar to the initial introductory phase 1. Strain comparisons indicated fewer calls in pairs of BTBR males and stimulus females than in pairs of B6 males and stimulus females and pairs of FVB males and stimulus females. In the absence of the female, all FVB males vocalized, while only one third of B6 males and one third of BTBR males vocalized. In all three strains, changes in call category repertoires were detected after the female was removed. Call categories reverted to the phase 1 pattern when the female was returned in phase 3. Present findings indicate that males of commonly used inbred strains emit USVs when a partner female leaves the testing arena, suggesting that removing a salient social stimulus may be a unique approach to elicit USVs from mice. Our three-phase paradigm may also be useful for studying attention to social cues, and qualitative differences in vocalizations when a social partner is present vs. suddenly absent.
成年雄性小鼠在与成年雌性小鼠互动时会发出大量复杂的超声波发声（USV）。不同近交系小鼠的叫声数量和叫声类别差异很大。对于社交伙伴离开时的USV发声情况，人们了解甚少。为了研究雄性小鼠在与雌性小鼠互动时以及雌性小鼠离开后叫声曲目和叫声频率是否不同，我们设计了一种新颖的雌雄社交互动测试，该测试在三个阶段记录发声情况。在第1阶段，雄性受试小鼠在干净的笼子里与一只陌生的处于发情期的雌性小鼠自由互动5分钟。在第2阶段，将雌性小鼠移走，而雄性小鼠留在笼子里3分钟。在第3阶段，将同一只雌性小鼠放回笼子与雄性受试小鼠重新相聚3分钟。使用C57BL/6J（B6）、FVB.129P2 - Pde6b(+) Tyr(c-ch)/Ant（FVB）和BTBR T + tf/J（BTBR）雄性受试小鼠进行了该实验范式测试。所有三个品系在与雌性伙伴的初次互动中都发出了USV。当在第3阶段重新引入雌性小鼠时，USV的数量与初始的第1阶段相似。品系比较表明，与B6雄性小鼠和刺激雌性小鼠的配对以及FVB雄性小鼠和刺激雌性小鼠的配对相比，BTBR雄性小鼠和刺激雌性小鼠的配对中叫声较少。在没有雌性小鼠的情况下，所有FVB雄性小鼠都发出了声音，而只有三分之一的B6雄性小鼠和三分之一的BTBR雄性小鼠发出了声音。在所有三个品系中，雌性小鼠被移走后检测到叫声类别曲目的变化。当在第3阶段将雌性小鼠放回时，叫声类别恢复到第1阶段的模式。目前的研究结果表明，当雌性伙伴离开测试区域时，常用近交系的雄性小鼠会发出USV，这表明去除一个显著的社会刺激可能是从小鼠中引出USV的一种独特方法。我们的三阶段实验范式也可能有助于研究对社会线索的关注，以及当有社交伙伴在场与突然不在场时发声的质的差异。
