Khan Tausif, Cherkas Kostiantyn, Francis Nikolas A
Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States.
Program in Applied Machine Learning, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2025 Jun 20;19:1602205. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1602205. eCollection 2025.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by challenges in social communication, difficulties in understanding social cues, a tendency to perform repetitive behaviors, and restricted interests. BTBR T Itpr3/J (BTBR) mice exhibit ASD-like behavior and are often used to study the biological basis of ASD. Social behavior in BTBR mice is typically scored manually by experimenters, which limits the precision and accuracy of behavioral quantification. Recent advancements in deep learning-based tools for machine vision, such as DeepLabCut (DLC), enable automated tracking of individual mice housed in social groups. Here, we used DLC to measure locomotion and social distance in pairs of familiar mice. We quantified social distance by finding the Euclidean distance between pairs of tracked mice. BTBR mice showed hyperlocomotion and greater social distance than CBA control mice. BTBR social distance was consistently greater than CBA control mice across the duration of a 60-min experiment. Despite exhibiting greater social distance, BTBR mice showed comparable socio-spatial arrangements of heads, bodies, and tails compared to CBA control mice. We also found that age, sex, and body size may affect social distance. Our findings demonstrate that DeepLabCut facilitates the quantification of social distance in BTBR mice, providing a complementary tool for existing behavioral assays.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的特征在于社交沟通方面的挑战、理解社交线索的困难、重复行为的倾向以及兴趣受限。BTBR T Itpr3/J（BTBR）小鼠表现出自闭症谱系障碍样行为，常被用于研究自闭症谱系障碍的生物学基础。BTBR小鼠的社交行为通常由实验者手动评分，这限制了行为量化的精度和准确性。基于深度学习的机器视觉工具（如DeepLabCut，DLC）的最新进展使得能够自动跟踪群居的单个小鼠。在此，我们使用DLC测量熟悉小鼠对之间的运动和社交距离。我们通过计算跟踪小鼠对之间的欧几里得距离来量化社交距离。BTBR小鼠比CBA对照小鼠表现出运动亢进和更大的社交距离。在60分钟的实验过程中，BTBR小鼠的社交距离始终大于CBA对照小鼠。尽管表现出更大的社交距离，但与CBA对照小鼠相比，BTBR小鼠头部、身体和尾巴的社会空间排列具有可比性。我们还发现年龄、性别和体型可能会影响社交距离。我们的研究结果表明，DeepLabCut有助于量化BTBR小鼠的社交距离，为现有的行为分析提供了一种补充工具。
