Summary: Following periods of acute isolation, female mice display a strong desire to socialize with other females by significantly increasing their production of social calls that are much like human emotional vocalizations. The behavioral response provides a new avenue to understand neural mechanisms through which social isolation affects a person’s social motivation and mental health.
Source: Cornell University
Female mice exhibit a strong drive to socialize with other females following periods of acute isolation, significantly increasing their production of social calls that are akin to human emotional vocalizations, new Cornell University research finds.
Their behavior suggests a promising pathway, the researchers say, for understanding the brain mechanisms through which isolation affects people’s social motivation and mental health – a growing concern during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That kind of social interaction between female mice is the most equivalent to our daily interactions with other people,” said Katherine Tschida, assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Intuitively, we know that social isolation has that effect on our behavior: We want to see and interact with people.”
The researchers set out to investigate whether exposure to acute isolation – three days alone in its home cage – would cause mice to increase so-called ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), as well as non-vocal social behaviors such as sniffing and following, when another mouse was introduced to the cage.
Inaudible to humans, Tschida said USVs are neither speech nor language but sounds such as laughing, crying and sighing that help indicate and communicate emotional states.
“It’s that kind of innate, emotional type of vocal communication that we produce on top of our learned speech sounds,” Tschida said. “By studying it in a mouse, we think we’ll gain insight into how that process is controlled in people as well.”
Female-female interactions showed a “profound effect” from acute isolation: a fourfold increase in USVs compared to a control group of mice kept in group housing, and more non-vocal social behaviors.
“They interact much more, they vocalize much more,” Tschida said, “and the behavior of the subject animal – the lonely mouse, essentially – seems to be altered.”
The scholars speculate that acute isolation may not be enough to significantly influence males’ sexual motivation with females, or aggressive motivation with other males. But it appeared to have a strong effect on the craving for affiliative social contact thought to motivate females’ social interaction.
With one complicating caveat: After emerging from isolation, female mice mounted other females more often, possibly an expression of low-level aggression aimed at establishing social hierarchy.
Tschida’s lab is now transitioning from behavioral to neural studies of interactions between female mice. The researchers hope to identify neurons that encode social context and emotional states to pinpoint how isolation acts on the circuits that control social motivation, including vocalizations.
Longer term, that knowledge could contribute to the understanding and treatment of disorders such as anxiety and depression, as well as factors that contribute to individual differences in susceptibility to social isolation.
“You feel lonely, you want to seek out social interaction – what actually causes that at the level of brain circuits?” Tschida said. “Because we have the behavioral output end of it sorted out, that becomes a much more tractable question.”
Abstract
Sex- and context-dependent effects of acute isolation on vocal and non-vocal social behaviors in mice
Humans are extraordinarily social, and social isolation has profound effects on our behavior, ranging from increased social motivation following short periods of social isolation to increased anti-social behaviors following long-term social isolation. Mice are frequently used as a model to understand how social isolation impacts the brain and behavior.
While the effects of chronic social isolation on mouse social behavior have been well studied, much less is known about how acute isolation impacts mouse social behavior and whether these effects vary according to the sex of the mouse and the behavioral context of the social encounter.
To address these questions, we characterized the effects of acute (3-day) social isolation on the vocal and non-vocal social behaviors of male and female mice during same-sex and opposite-sex social interactions.
Our experiments uncovered pronounced effects of acute isolation on social interactions between female mice, while revealing more subtle effects on the social behaviors of male mice during same-sex and opposite-sex interactions.
Our findings advance the study of same-sex interactions between female mice as an attractive paradigm to investigate neural mechanisms through which acute isolation enhances social motivation and promotes social behavior.
Author: Becka Bowyer
Source: Cornell University
Contact: Becka Bowyer – Cornell University
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“Sex- and context-dependent effects of acute isolation on vocal and non-vocal social behaviors in mice” by Katherine Tschida et al. PLOS ONE
