Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Münster, Badestraße 13, 48149, Münster, Germany.
Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2020 Sep 17;10(1):15255. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-71994-9.
A comprehensive understanding of animals' emotions can be achieved by combining cognitive, behavioural, and physiological measures. Applying such a multi-method approach, we here examined the emotional state of mice after they had made one of three different social experiences: either a mildly "adverse", a "beneficial", or a "neutral" experience. Using a recently established touchscreen paradigm, cognitive judgement bias was assessed twice, once before and once after the respective experience. Anxiety-like behaviour was examined using a standardised battery of behavioural tests and faecal corticosterone metabolite concentrations were measured. Surprisingly, only minor effects of the social experiences on the animals' cognitive judgement bias and no effects on anxiety-like behaviour and corticosterone metabolite levels were found. It might be speculated that the experiences provided were not strong enough to exert the expected impact on the animals' emotional state. Alternatively, the intensive training procedure necessary for cognitive judgement bias testing might have had a cognitive enrichment effect, potentially countering external influences. While further investigations are required to ascertain the specific causes underlying our findings, the present study adds essential empirical data to the so far scarce amount of studies combining cognitive, behavioural, and physiological measures of emotional state in mice.
通过结合认知、行为和生理测量，可以全面了解动物的情绪。应用这种多方法的方法，我们在这里研究了小鼠在经历三种不同的社交体验后的情绪状态：轻度“不利”、“有益”或“中性”体验。使用最近建立的触摸屏范式，我们两次评估认知判断偏差，一次是在体验之前，一次是在体验之后。使用标准化的行为测试套件检查焦虑样行为，并测量粪便皮质酮代谢物浓度。令人惊讶的是，社交体验对动物的认知判断偏差几乎没有影响，对焦虑样行为和皮质酮代谢物水平也没有影响。可以推测，提供的体验不够强烈，无法对动物的情绪状态产生预期的影响。或者，认知判断偏差测试所需的密集训练程序可能具有认知丰富效应，潜在地抵消了外部影响。虽然需要进一步的研究来确定我们发现的具体原因，但本研究为目前结合认知、行为和生理测量来研究小鼠情绪状态的为数不多的研究提供了重要的经验数据。
