Interdisciplinary Neurobehavioral Core, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
Research Group of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research at the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2019 Jul 31;14(7):e0220238. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220238. eCollection 2019.
Ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) are emitted by mice under certain developmental, social and behavioral conditions. The analysis of USV can be used as a reliable measure of the general affective state, for testing the efficacy of pharmacological compounds and for investigating communication in mutant mice with predicted social or communication deficits. Social and communication studies in mice have focused mainly on the investigation of USV emitted by neonatal pups after separation from the dam and during social interaction between adult males and females. Longitudinal USV analysis among the different developmental states remained uninvestigated. In our study, we first recorded USV from three inbred mouse strains C57BL/6N, DBA/2 and FVB/N during the neonatal stages after separation from the littermates and then during a reunion with one littermate. Our results revealed significant strain-specific differences in the numbers and categories of USV calls. In addition, the USV profiles seemed to be sensitive to small developmental progress during infancy. By following these mice to the adolescent stage and measuring USV in the three-chamber social test, we found that USV profiles still showed significant differences between these strains in the different trials of the test. To study the effects of social context on USV characteristics, we measured USV emitted by another cohort of adolescent mice during the direct social interaction test. To this end, this study provides a strategy for evaluating novel mouse mutants in behavioral questions relevant to disorders with deficits in communication and sociability and emphasizes the important contribution of genetics and experimental contexts on the behavioral outcome.
超声发声（USV）是在特定的发育、社会和行为条件下由老鼠发出的。对 USV 的分析可以作为衡量一般情感状态的可靠指标，用于测试药物化合物的疗效，并用于研究具有预测社会或沟通缺陷的突变体老鼠的交流。老鼠的社会和交流研究主要集中在研究新生幼鼠在与母体分离后和成年雌雄老鼠之间的社会互动期间发出的 USV。不同发育状态之间的纵向 USV 分析尚未得到研究。在我们的研究中，我们首先记录了来自三个近交系老鼠品系 C57BL/6N、DBA/2 和 FVB/N 的 USV，这些老鼠在与同窝幼鼠分离后的新生儿阶段，然后在与一个同窝幼鼠团聚期间记录 USV。我们的结果显示，在数量和 USV 叫声类别方面，不同品系之间存在显著的特异性差异。此外，USV 谱似乎对婴儿期的微小发育进展敏感。通过跟踪这些老鼠到青春期阶段，并在三箱社交测试中测量 USV，我们发现这些品系在测试的不同试验中，USV 谱仍存在显著差异。为了研究社会环境对 USV 特征的影响，我们在直接社交互动测试中测量了另一组青春期老鼠发出的 USV。为此，这项研究为评估与沟通和社交能力缺陷相关障碍的新型老鼠突变体提供了一种策略，并强调了遗传和实验背景对行为结果的重要贡献。
