Argue Kathryn J, McCarthy Margaret M
Department of Pharmacology and Program in Neuroscience, University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA.
Curr Neurobiol. 2015;6(1):17-23. doi: 10.4172/0975-9042.000117.
The study of juvenile social play behavior has gained popularity due to the disruption of social behaviors in several psychiatric illnesses. In contrast to many tests currently utilized in animal models of psychiatric illness, juvenile social play behavior is part of the normal behavioral repertoire in the laboratory rat and can be observed in a controlled setting but without evocation by the experimenter. Understanding sources of naturally occurring differences in the juvenile social play behavior of the rat is a fundamental first step to guide future research on identifying factors that disrupt this behavior. One of the most commonly found variations is a sex difference, with male rats displaying higher levels of rough-and-tumble play behavior relative to females. This sex difference is also observed in human play. In our recent paper published in , we investigated how the sex and familiarity of the play partner can impact different components of rough-and-tumble play behavior (pouncing, pinning, boxing, and chasing) and the observation of sex differences within each of these components. Our findings suggest that juvenile male rough-and-tumble play behavior is impacted by the sex of their play partner, while females are more sensitive to the familiarity of their play partner. In this review, we discuss our recent findings and provide a comprehensive comparison of methodology and the reporting of sex differences in the literature on this topic.
由于多种精神疾病中社会行为受到干扰，青少年社会玩耍行为的研究越来越受到关注。与目前在精神疾病动物模型中使用的许多测试不同，青少年社会玩耍行为是实验室大鼠正常行为库的一部分，可在受控环境中观察到，但无需实验者诱发。了解大鼠青少年社会玩耍行为中自然存在差异的来源，是指导未来识别干扰这种行为因素研究的基本第一步。最常见的差异之一是性别差异，雄性大鼠相对于雌性表现出更高水平的打闹玩耍行为。这种性别差异在人类玩耍中也有观察到。在我们最近发表在 的论文中，我们研究了玩耍伙伴的性别和熟悉程度如何影响打闹玩耍行为的不同组成部分（突袭、压制、拳击和追逐），以及这些组成部分中每一个的性别差异观察。我们的研究结果表明，青少年雄性打闹玩耍行为受其玩耍伙伴性别的影响，而雌性对其玩耍伙伴的熟悉程度更敏感。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了我们最近的研究结果，并对该主题文献中的方法学和性别差异报告进行了全面比较。
