Cum Meghan, Santiago Pérez Jocelyn A, Wangia Erika, Lopez Naeliz, Wright Elizabeth S, Iwata Ryo L, Li Albert, Chambers Amelia R, Padilla-Coreano Nancy
Department of Neuroscience, University of Florida, Gainesville, 32610, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Jan 26;14(1):2221. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-52277-z.
Social recognition is crucial for survival in social species, and necessary for group living, selective reproduction, pair bonding, and dominance hierarchies. Mice and rats are the most commonly used animal models in social memory research, however current paradigms do not account for the complex social dynamics they exhibit in the wild. To assess the range of social memories being studied, we conducted a systematic analysis of neuroscience articles testing the social memory of mice and rats published within the past two decades and analyzed their methods. Our results show that despite these rodent's rich social memory capabilities, the majority of social recognition papers explore short-term memories and short-term familiarity levels with minimal exposure between subject and familiar stimuli-a narrow type of social memory. We have identified several key areas currently understudied or underrepresented: kin relationships, mates, social ranks, sex variabilities, and the effects of aging. Additionally, reporting on social stimulus variables such as housing history, strain, and age, is limited, which may impede reproducibility. Overall, our data highlight large gaps in the diversity of social memories studied and the effects social variables have on social memory mechanisms.
社会认知对于群居物种的生存至关重要，对于群体生活、选择性繁殖、配偶关系和等级制度也必不可少。小鼠和大鼠是社会记忆研究中最常用的动物模型，然而目前的范式并未考虑它们在自然环境中表现出的复杂社会动态。为了评估正在研究的社会记忆范围，我们对过去二十年发表的测试小鼠和大鼠社会记忆的神经科学文章进行了系统分析，并分析了它们的方法。我们的结果表明，尽管这些啮齿动物具有丰富的社会记忆能力，但大多数社会认知论文探索的是短期记忆和短期熟悉程度，且主体与熟悉刺激之间的接触极少——这是一种狭义的社会记忆。我们确定了几个目前研究不足或代表性不足的关键领域：亲属关系、配偶、社会等级、性别差异以及衰老的影响。此外，关于社会刺激变量（如饲养历史、品系和年龄）的报告有限，这可能会妨碍可重复性。总体而言，我们的数据凸显了所研究的社会记忆多样性以及社会变量对社会记忆机制影响方面的巨大差距。
