Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Japan; Department of Ophthalmology, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Fukui, Japan.
Research Center for Child Mental Development, Kanazawa University, Japan; Department of Socioneurosciences, United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Kanazawa University, Hamamatsu Univeristy School of Medicine, Chiba University and Univeristy of Fukui, Kanazawa Campus, Japan.
Neurosci Lett. 2021 Jul 27;758:135985. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2021.135985. Epub 2021 May 25.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by communication disability with no curative treatment. Maternal separation-induced ultrasonic vocalisation (USV) was widely used to assess communication disability between pups and dams. Particularly, USV calls in many genetically modified ASD model mice were altered. Previously, we demonstrated that mice pups exposed to valproic acid in utero (VPA pups) showed decreased number of USV calls on postnatal day 11 and were rescued by subcutaneous injection of oxytocin. However, the qualitative change of USV calls by oxytocin has not been evaluated in VPA pups. In the present study, we examined the duration of oxytocin effect and analysed the altered pattern of USV calls using VPA pups. The oxytocin administration increased the total number of USV calls and the effect persisted up to 120 min in VPA pups. The pattern analysis revealed that the increase in the number of complex calls also persisted up to 120 min. These results suggested that oxytocin had a prolonged effect on USV calls, mainly on complex calls, in VPA pup, showing that oxytocin could recover their social modality to respond to maternal separation.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）是一种神经发育障碍，其特征是存在沟通障碍，且无治愈方法。母婴分离诱导的超声发声（USV）被广泛用于评估幼崽和母鼠之间的沟通障碍。特别是，许多基因修饰的 ASD 模型小鼠的 USV 叫声发生了改变。先前，我们证明了在子宫内暴露于丙戊酸的小鼠幼崽（VPA 幼崽）在出生后第 11 天的 USV 叫声数量减少，并通过皮下注射催产素得到挽救。然而，催产素对 VPA 幼崽 USV 叫声的定性变化尚未得到评估。在本研究中，我们检查了催产素作用的持续时间，并使用 VPA 幼崽分析了 USV 叫声的改变模式。催产素的给药增加了 USV 叫声的总数，并且在 VPA 幼崽中，这种效果持续了 120 分钟。模式分析表明，复杂叫声数量的增加也持续了 120 分钟。这些结果表明，催产素对 VPA 幼崽的 USV 叫声具有延长作用，主要是对复杂叫声，表明催产素可以恢复其对母婴分离的社会反应模式。
