Tansley Shannon N, Tuttle Alexander H, Wu Neil, Tohyama Sarasa, Dossett Kimberly, Gerstein Lindsay, Ham Boram, Austin Jean-Sebastien, Sotocinal Susana G, Mogil Jeffrey S
Department of Psychology and Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Genes Brain Behav. 2019 Jan;18(1):e12514. doi: 10.1111/gbb.12514. Epub 2018 Sep 19.
The potential influence of pain on social behavior in laboratory animals has rarely been evaluated. Using a new assay of social behavior, the tube co-occupancy test (TCOT), we assess propinquity-the tendency to maintain close physical proximity-in mice exposed to pain using subcutaneous zymosan or spared nerve injury as noxious stimuli. Our previous experience with the TCOT showed that outbred mouse sibling dyads show higher levels of tube co-occupancy than stranger dyads. We find here that long-lasting pain from spared nerve injury given to both mice in the dyad abolishes this effect of familiarity, such that strangers also display high levels of propinquity. We performed a separate experiment to assess the effect on dominance behavior of nerve injury to one or both mice of a dyad in which relative dominance status had been previously established via the confrontation tube test. We find that neuropathic pain given only to the dominant mouse reverses the relationship in male but not female mice, such that the previously subordinate mouse becomes dominant. These observations bolster the scant but growing evidence that pain can robustly affect social behavior in animals.
疼痛对实验动物社会行为的潜在影响鲜有评估。我们采用一种新的社会行为测定方法——试管共居试验（TCOT），来评估遭受疼痛刺激（皮下注射酵母聚糖或保留神经损伤作为有害刺激）的小鼠的亲近度，即保持紧密身体距离的倾向。我们之前使用TCOT的经验表明，远交系小鼠同胞二元组的试管共居水平高于陌生二元组。我们在此发现，给二元组中的两只小鼠都造成保留神经损伤带来的长期疼痛，会消除这种熟悉度效应，使得陌生小鼠也表现出高亲近度。我们进行了另一项实验，以评估对二元组中一只或两只小鼠进行神经损伤对支配行为的影响，该二元组的相对支配地位先前已通过对抗试管试验确定。我们发现，仅对优势雄鼠施加神经性疼痛会逆转其支配关系，但对雌鼠则不然，即先前处于从属地位的小鼠会变成优势小鼠。这些观察结果支持了虽少但不断增加的证据，即疼痛会强烈影响动物的社会行为。
