Dataset Information

A novel system for tracking social preference dynamics in mice reveals sex- and strain-specific characteristics.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Deciphering the biological mechanisms underlying social behavior in animal models requires standard behavioral paradigms that can be unbiasedly employed in an observer- and laboratory-independent manner. During the past decade, the three-chamber test has become such a standard paradigm used to evaluate social preference (sociability) and social novelty preference in mice. This test suffers from several caveats, including its reliance on spatial navigation skills and negligence of behavioral dynamics.

Methods

Here, we present a novel experimental apparatus and an automated analysis system which offer an alternative to the three-chamber test while solving the aforementioned caveats. The custom-made apparatus is simple for production, and the analysis system is publically available as an open-source software, enabling its free use. We used this system to compare the dynamics of social behavior during the social preference and social novelty preference tests between male and female C57BL/6J mice.

Results

We found that in both tests, male mice keep their preference towards one of the stimuli for longer periods than females. We then employed our system to define several new parameters of social behavioral dynamics in mice and revealed that social preference behavior is segregated in time into two distinct phases. An early exploration phase, characterized by high rate of transitions between stimuli and short bouts of stimulus investigation, is followed by an interaction phase with low transition rate and prolonged interactions, mainly with the preferred stimulus. Finally, we compared the dynamics of social behavior between C57BL/6J and BTBR male mice, the latter of which are considered as asocial strain serving as a model for autism spectrum disorder. We found that BTBR mice (n?=?8) showed a specific deficit in transition from the exploration phase to the interaction phase in the social preference test, suggesting a reduced tendency towards social interaction.

Conclusions

We successfully employed our new experimental system to unravel previously unidentified sex- and strain-specific differences in the dynamics of social behavior in mice. Thus, the system presented here facilitates a more thorough and detailed analysis of social behavior in small rodent models, enabling a better comparison between strains and treatments.

SUBMITTER: Netser S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5627457 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

A novel system for tracking social preference dynamics in mice reveals sex- and strain-specific characteristics.

Netser Shai S Haskal Shani S Magalnik Hen H Wagner Shlomo S

Molecular autism 20171003

<h4>Background</h4>Deciphering the biological mechanisms underlying social behavior in animal models requires standard behavioral paradigms that can be unbiasedly employed in an observer- and laboratory-independent manner. During the past decade, the three-chamber test has become such a standard paradigm used to evaluate social preference (sociability) and social novelty preference in mice. This test suffers from several caveats, including its reliance on spatial navigation skills and negligence ...[more]

PMID: 29026510

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Project description:Social interactions are made of complex behavioural actions that might be found in all mammalians, including humans and rodents. Recently, mouse models are increasingly being used in preclinical research to understand the biological basis of social-related pathologies or abnormalities. However, reliable and flexible automatic systems able to precisely quantify social behavioural interactions of multiple mice are still missing. Here, we present a system built on two components. A module able to accurately track the position of multiple interacting mice from videos, regardless of their fur colour or light settings, and a module that automatically characterise social and non-social behaviours. The behavioural analysis is obtained by deriving a new set of specialised spatio-temporal features from the tracker output. These features are further employed by a learning-by-example classifier, which predicts for each frame and for each mouse in the cage one of the behaviours learnt from the examples given by the experimenters. The system is validated on an extensive set of experimental trials involving multiple mice in an open arena. In a first evaluation we compare the classifier output with the independent evaluation of two human graders, obtaining comparable results. Then, we show the applicability of our technique to multiple mice settings, using up to four interacting mice. The system is also compared with a solution recently proposed in the literature that, similarly to us, addresses the problem with a learning-by-examples approach. Finally, we further validated our automatic system to differentiate between C57B/6J (a commonly used reference inbred strain) and BTBR T+tf/J (a mouse model for autism spectrum disorders). Overall, these data demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of this new machine learning system in the detection of social and non-social behaviours in multiple (>2) interacting mice, and its versatility to deal with different experimental settings and scenarios.

Dataset Information

A novel system for tracking social preference dynamics in mice reveals sex- and strain-specific characteristics.

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

A novel system for tracking social preference dynamics in mice reveals sex- and strain-specific characteristics.

Similar Datasets

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