The Sociability Task

Background

In prior experiments outside the lab in adolescent rats, it was found that rats developed cognitive problems such as deficits of learning and memory when maternally separated (MS) or maternally deprived. It was also recorded that MS rats had depressive and anxious-like behaviors; similar to studies in the social behaviors of children with severe neglect (foster care, orphanages, parental neglect) (Joushi et al., 2021). By this rationale, the experiment provided a basis for enrichment based-therapies in social-disorder treatment, and an alternative to pharmacological approaches, as studies show environmental enrichment (EE) can combat the deficits created by MS- particularly in sociability to species of their own.

In our experiment, we use maternal separation (MS) in CD-1 mice to model the effects of early life adversity in human children- where in this aspect our research we look at deficits in sociability in adolescence. The sociability task examines sniffing time to a stranger mouse- or a mouse the test mouse has never encountered before. This allows us to observe the mouse's social approach behaviors, such as avoidance or interest; where we expect control mice to exhibit interest to the stranger mouse rather than avoidance as MS mice do.

Video Example

Here is a 1 minute example of what each period of the sociability task looks like from a control mouse:

Analysis

Data from the sociability task is analysed using SPSS statistics, where an ANOVA of the habituation and sociability period results are utilized.

Latest Results

From our 2022 Sociability experiment, we had decided to socially mix maternally separated CD-1 mice alongside control mice, who were not maternally separated. The rationale behind this experiment was that human children do not spend time with only their families throughout childhood- we go to school and socialize with other people- even throughout early life adversity. Therefore, for the maternal separation period, MS groups were separated from their mother for 3 hours a day in a room separate from the mother for 2 week, or from P1-P14 as usual. Mice were then housed in same sex groups of 4 and all groups were environmentally enriched in these conditions from P21-P36. On P36, the sociability test was conducted and the following results were found following analysis:

Conclusions and Next Steps
From this we learned that social mixing and EE together has maintained sociability benefits to a stranger mouse. However, because MS mice spend more time investigating the empty apparatus, it suggests sociability is distracted. It also suggests that because MS failed to habituate- it implies cognitive repercussions in SM and EE together or object recognition deficits.

This leads us to study attention deficits (ADHD), with implications that maternal separation can be used as attention deficit model. Bringing us to our current project of re-establishing baseline effects of maternal separation. This is because old standardized cages in the left and right chambers of the sociability apparatus did not originally allow the test mouse to physically see the stranger mouse, where our experiment used new standardized cages- allowing the test mouse to see the stranger mouse.