Social communication in mice – Are there optimal cage conditions?

Abstract

IntroductionNeuropsychiatric diseases affect heavily the social life of patients. In many cases, social communication is affected and becomes atypical. The patients get isolated in their social environment, due to a lack of interest for social interactions or atypical ways of interacting. AbstractSocial communication is heavily affected in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders. Accordingly, mouse models designed to study the mechanisms leading to these disorders are tested for this phenotypic trait. Test conditions vary between different models, and the effect of these test conditions on the quantity and quality of social interactions and ultrasonic communication is unknown. The present study examines to which extent the habituation time to the test cage as well as the shape / size of the cage influence social communication in freely interacting mice. We tested 8 pairs of male mice in free dyadic social interactions, with two habituation times (20 min and 30 min) and three cage formats (rectangle, round, square). We tested the effect of these conditions on the different types of social contacts, approach-escape sequences, follow behavior, and the time each animal spent in the vision field of the other one, as well as on the emission of ultrasonic vocalizations and their contexts of emission. We provide for the first time an integrated analysis of the social interaction behavior and ultrasonic vocalizations. Surprisingly, we did not highlight any significant effect of habituation time and cage shape / size on the behavioral events examined. There was only a slight increase of social interactions with the longer habituation time in the round cage. Remarkably, we also showed that vocalizations were emitted during specific behavioral sequences especially during close contact or approach behaviors. The present study provides a protocol reliably eliciting social contacts and ultrasonic vocalizations in male mice. This protocol is therefore well adapted for standardized investigation of social interactions in mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders.Keyword mouse; social interactions; ultrasonic vocalizations; cages; social communication not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.The copyright holder for this preprint (which was . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/011783 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Nov. 26, 2014; 2 Genetic studies of neuropsychiatric diseases led to the identification of several susceptibility genes for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) [1,2] or schizophrenia [3]. Mice remain one of the privileged mammalian animal models to study neuropsychiatric disorders, given the relative easiness of genetic modifications in this species.Mice are social animals using olfactory, visual, tactile and acoustic signals to communicate [4][5][6][7]. Acoustic signals are one of the easiest communication signal types to measure and quantify, and they are considered as a reliable proxy to model social communication deficits [8,9]. Therefore, social interactio...

Spontaneous social communication in laboratory mice - placing ultrasonic vocalizations in their behavioral context

“…As previously observed in captive wild house mice (von Merten et al, 2014), we confirm over a long period that males in same-sex pairs emit few spontaneous USVs. In contrast, sociallydeprived males have been shown to emit a non-negligible number of USVs (e.g., (Chabout et al, 2012;Ferhat et al, 2015b;Hammerschmidt et al, 2012)). In these previous studies, the vocal repertoire did not differ significantly between males and females in this context (Hammerschmidt et al, 2012) and both sexes emitted USVs mostly during ano-genital sniffing and approach behavior (Ferhat et al, 2015b(Ferhat et al, , 2016b.…”

“…In contrast, sociallydeprived males have been shown to emit a non-negligible number of USVs (e.g., (Chabout et al, 2012;Ferhat et al, 2015b;Hammerschmidt et al, 2012)). In these previous studies, the vocal repertoire did not differ significantly between males and females in this context (Hammerschmidt et al, 2012) and both sexes emitted USVs mostly during ano-genital sniffing and approach behavior (Ferhat et al, 2015b(Ferhat et al, , 2016b. In the present study, males emitted USVs in short bursts with context-specific rates a hundred times lower than that of females (Figure 2b), probably because females were more active (longer distance travelled during the night) and spent more time in social interactions than males (Supplementary Figure S20; see also (de Chaumont et al, 2019)).…”

“…The contexts and functions of USVs have been studied in diverse conditions. USVs are mostly emitted during close contacts and approach behaviors in male-male (Ferhat et al, 2015a) and female-female (Ferhat et al, 2016a) interactions (including when one is socially deprived).…”

Recording Mouse Ultrasonic Vocalizations to Evaluate Social Communication

“…Recent analysis methods now provide a semi-automatic detailed characterization of the social events and sequences of events during an interaction (using MiceProfiler for instance) 36 , as well as the possibility to combine this analysis with data from audio recordings. The main advantage of this method is to provide a comprehensive view of the social communication in mouse models of ASD, to more precisely identify which aspects of social communication are affected.…”

“…The focus should now also be set on the receiver of these signals, to better identify the functions of these acoustic signals. This should be done by evaluating also the behavior of the new-comer mice in the present protocols in adults (using MiceProfiler for instance) 36 , by using playback experiments 16 , or by setting up new protocols. Indeed, the present protocols provide very constrained situations that might not reflect the exact ethological conditions of vocalization emission in mice.…”