Dataset Information

Display of individuality in avoidance behavior and risk assessment of inbred mice.

ABSTRACT: Factors determining individuality are still poorly understood. Rodents are excellent model organisms to study individuality, due to a rich behavioral repertoire and the availability of well-characterized isogenic populations. However, most current behavioral assays for rodents have short test duration in novel test environments and require human interference, which introduce coercion, thereby limiting the assessment of naturally occurring individuality. Thus, we developed an automated behavior system to longitudinally monitor conditioned fear for assessing PTSD-like behavior in individual mice. The system consists of a safe home compartment connected to a risk-prone test compartment (TC). Entry and exploration of the TC is solely based on deliberate choice determined by individual fear responsiveness and fear extinction. In this novel ethological assay, C57BL/6J mice show homogeneous responses after shock exposure (innate fear), but striking variation in long-lasting fear responses based on avoidance and risk assessment (learned fear), including automated stretch-attend posture quantification. TC entry (retention) latencies after foot shock differed >24 h and the re-explored TC area differed >50% among inbred mice. Next, we compared two closely related C57BL/6 substrains. Despite substantial individual differences, previously observed higher fear of C57BL/6N vs. C57BL/6J mice was reconfirmed, whereas fear extinction was fast and did not differ. The observed variation in fear expression in isogenic mice suggests individual differences in coping style with PTSD-like avoidance. Investigating the assumed epigenetic mechanisms, with reduced interpretational ambiguity and enhanced translational value in this assay, may help improve understanding of personality type-dependent susceptibility and resilience to neuropsychiatric disorders such as PTSD.

SUBMITTER: Hager T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4165351 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Display of individuality in avoidance behavior and risk assessment of inbred mice.

Hager Torben T Jansen René F RF Pieneman Anton W AW Manivannan Suriya N SN Golani Ilan I van der Sluis Sophie S Smit August B AB Verhage Matthijs M Stiedl Oliver O

Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience 20140916

Factors determining individuality are still poorly understood. Rodents are excellent model organisms to study individuality, due to a rich behavioral repertoire and the availability of well-characterized isogenic populations. However, most current behavioral assays for rodents have short test duration in novel test environments and require human interference, which introduce coercion, thereby limiting the assessment of naturally occurring individuality. Thus, we developed an automated behavior s ...[more]

PMID: 25278853

Similar Datasets

Project description:Individual variation in maternal care in mammals shows a significant heritable component, with the maternal behavior of daughters resembling that of their mothers. In laboratory mice, genetically distinct inbred strains show stable differences in maternal care during the first postnatal week. Moreover, cross fostering and reciprocal breeding studies demonstrate that differences in maternal care between inbred strains persist in the absence of genetic differences, demonstrating a non-genetic or epigenetic contribution to maternal behavior. In this study we applied a mathematical tool, called hidden Markov model (HMM), to analyze the behavior of female mice in the presence of their young. The frequency of several maternal behaviors in mice has been previously described, including nursing/grooming pups and tending to the nest. However, the ordering, clustering, and transitions between these behaviors have not been systematically described and thus a global description of maternal behavior is lacking. Here we used HMM to describe maternal behavior patterns in two genetically distinct mouse strains, C57BL/6 and BALB/c, and their genetically identical reciprocal hybrid female offspring. HMM analysis is a powerful tool to identify patterns of events that cluster in time and to determine transitions between these clusters, or hidden states. For the HMM analysis we defined seven states: arched-backed nursing, blanket nursing, licking/grooming pups, grooming, activity, eating, and sleeping. By quantifying the frequency, duration, composition, and transition probabilities of these states we were able to describe the pattern of maternal behavior in mouse and identify aspects of these patterns that are under genetic and nongenetic inheritance. Differences in these patterns observed in the experimental groups (inbred and hybrid females) were detected only after the application of HMM analysis whereas classical statistical methods and analyses were not able to highlight them.

Dataset Information

Display of individuality in avoidance behavior and risk assessment of inbred mice.

Publications

Display of individuality in avoidance behavior and risk assessment of inbred mice.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets