Institutes of Brain Science, State Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, MOE Frontiers Center for Brain Science, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics (Ministry of Education), School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Neurosci Lett. 2022 Jan 23;770:136426. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2021.136426. Epub 2021 Dec 28.
Nonconscious behavioral mimicry is prevalent in humans and highly social animals who imitate the behaviors of others without awareness. Previous studies indicated people tended to match their amount of eating to that of their eating companions due to behavioral mimicry, however whether such phenomena were existed in rodents is still unknown. Developing a behavioral paradigm would be helpful to better understand the molecular and circuit mechanisms underlying behavioral mimicry. In this study, we examined behavioral mimicry of eating in C57BL/6J mice which had strong sociality and were widely used as animal model in researches. We set up an eating monitoring platform, and this platform could record the data of mice eating behavior in real time. We further examined the behavioral mimicry of eating in mice, and found that the mice observing eating behavior of food-restricted mice would consume more food than control mice, and visual cue with eating behavior was sufficient to increased food consumption in mice. Our study indicated behavioral mimicry of eating was existed in mice and provided a mouse model for future studies on the mechanism of behavioral mimicry of eating.
无意识行为模仿在人类和高度社会化的动物中很普遍，这些动物在无意识的情况下模仿他人的行为。先前的研究表明，由于行为模仿，人们往往会根据同伴的进食量来调整自己的进食量，然而这种现象是否存在于啮齿类动物中尚不清楚。开发一种行为范式将有助于更好地理解行为模仿的分子和电路机制。在这项研究中，我们检查了 C57BL/6J 小鼠的进食行为模仿，这些小鼠具有很强的社会性，被广泛用作研究中的动物模型。我们建立了一个进食监测平台，该平台可以实时记录小鼠进食行为的数据。我们进一步研究了小鼠的进食行为模仿，发现观察到食物限制的小鼠进食行为的小鼠会比对照组的小鼠消耗更多的食物，并且具有进食行为的视觉提示足以增加小鼠的食物摄入量。我们的研究表明，进食行为模仿在小鼠中存在，并为未来研究进食行为模仿的机制提供了一个小鼠模型。
