Lawande Niraj V, Ujjainwala Ammar L, Christian Catherine A
Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
Bio Protoc. 2020 Jan 20;10(2). doi: 10.21769/BioProtoc.3499.
The ability to recognize and interact with members of the same species is essential for social communication. Investigating the neural substrates of social interest and recognition may offer insights into the behavioral differences present in disorders affecting social behavior. Assays used to study social interest in rodents include the 3-chamber test, a partition test, and a social interaction test. Here, we present a single protocol that can be used to quantify the level of social interest displayed by mice, the ability to distinguish between different individual mice (social recognition), and the level of repetitive self-grooming displayed. In the first part of the protocol, a social habituation/dishabituation test, the time spent by a test mouse sniffing a stimulus mouse is quantified over 9 trials. In the first 8 interactions, the same stimulus mouse is used repeatedly; on the ninth trial, a novel stimulus mouse is presented. Intact social recognition is indicated by a progressive decrease in the investigation time over trials 1-8, and an increase in trial 9. The interval between each social trial is used to quantify self-grooming, a stereotyped repetitive behavior in mice. We also present a method for randomized, blinded analysis of these behaviors to increase rigor and reproducibility of results. Therefore, this single behavioral test enables ready assessment of phenotypes of both social and repetitive behaviors in an integrated manner in the same animals. This feature can be advantageous in understanding interactions between these behaviors and phenotypes in mouse models with genetic variants associated with autism and other neurodevelopmental or neuropsychiatric disorders, which are often characterized by these behavioral differences.
识别同一物种成员并与之互动的能力对于社会交流至关重要。研究社会兴趣和识别的神经基础可能有助于深入了解影响社会行为的疾病中存在的行为差异。用于研究啮齿动物社会兴趣的试验包括三室试验、分区试验和社会互动试验。在此，我们提出一种单一方案，可用于量化小鼠表现出的社会兴趣水平、区分不同个体小鼠的能力（社会识别）以及所表现出的重复自我梳理水平。在该方案的第一部分，即社会习惯化/去习惯化试验中，在9次试验过程中对测试小鼠嗅探刺激小鼠所花费的时间进行量化。在前8次互动中，反复使用同一只刺激小鼠；在第9次试验中，引入一只新的刺激小鼠。完整的社会识别表现为在第1 - 8次试验中调查时间逐渐减少，而在第9次试验中增加。每次社会试验之间的间隔用于量化自我梳理，这是小鼠的一种刻板重复行为。我们还提出了一种对这些行为进行随机、盲法分析的方法，以提高结果的严谨性和可重复性。因此，这种单一行为测试能够以综合方式在同一动物中轻松评估社会行为和重复行为的表型。在理解与自闭症及其他神经发育或神经精神疾病相关的基因变异小鼠模型中这些行为与表型之间的相互作用时，这一特点可能具有优势，这些疾病通常以这些行为差异为特征。
