Behavioral Modulation by Social Experiences in Rodent Models

Abstract

The lasting behavioral changes elicited by social signals provide important adaptations for survival of organisms that thrive as a group. Unlike the rapid innate responses to social cues, such adaptations have been understudied. Here, the rodent models of the lasting socially induced behavioral changes are presented as either modulations or reinforcements of the distinct forms of learning and memory or non-associative changes of affective state. The purpose of this categorization is to draw attention to the potential mechanistic links between the neuronal pathways that process social cues and the neuronal systems that mediate the well-studied forms of learning and memory. © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Linking Social Cognition to Learning and Memory

“…A common observation across studies regardless of species, strain, or observational learning paradigm is the enhancement of learning with increased familiarity or relatedness between subjects (Zentall and Levine, 1972;Carlier and Jamon, 2006;Saggerson and Honey, 2006;Burke et al, 2010;Bruchey et al, 2010;Jeon et al, 2010;Jeon and Shin, 2011;Yusufishaq and Rosenkranz, 2013;Jones et al, 2014;Debiec and Olsson, 2017;Pisansky et al, 2017;Allsop et al, 2018;Morozov, 2018;Sivaselvachandran et al, 2018;Nomura et al, 2019). In general, with increased familiarity or relatedness, there is both increased transfer of fear during observational fear learning sessions and enhanced fear memory recall by the observer the following day.…”

“…Social learning involves at least two agents, at least one of which updates their knowledge base by acquiring information from the other (for details, see Box 1). Classifications of social learning and cognition are wide-ranging and divisive, often dependent on the specialty of the researchers defining the behaviors and their opinions regarding the presence of higher-order animal cognition in nonhuman species (Zentall and Galef, 1988;Choleris and Kavaliers, 1999;Lacey and Solomon, 2003;Zentall, 2006;Olsson and Phelps, 2007;Wolff, 2007;Christov-Moore et al, 2014;Gariépy et al, 2014;Shin, 2016, 2019;Debiec and Olsson, 2017;Kiyokawa and Hennessy, 2018;Morozov, 2018;Sivaselvachandran et al, 2018;Carcea and Froemke, 2019). How social learning in rodents can be classified per se is outside the focus of this review and is further discussed elsewhere (Zentall and Galef, 1988;Zentall, 2006).…”

Love and fear in the times of sickness

“…A priori , this should be no more difficult to take place than the social transmission of food preferences. There is ample evidence that in rodents a naïve observer having the possibility to interact with a demonstrator consuming a given food will develop robust preference for the same food even in the absence of direct access to the food [ 31 , 32 ]. Information about safety of the consumed food is based on visual and olfactory cues emanating from the food and on chemosensory signals present in the demonstrator’s breath, urine or feces.…”

Morphine exposure during adolescence induces enduring social changes dependent on adolescent stage of exposure, sex, and social test.

“…There are few instances in the literature in which the conspecific’s social behavior is coded alongside the experimental target’s behavior. Sociability is a bidirectional process where two or more individuals engage in an association (Denommé & Mason, 2022; Kiyokawa et al, 2014; Morozov, 2018). Research in humans indicates that people tend to spend more time interacting with neurotypical persons (Perich et al, 2022; Sasson et al, 2017; Zweifel, 2021), this can be among the reasons people with psychiatric illness or substance use disorder are more likely to have insufficient social connections that get worse with time and disease progression (Cadigan et al, 2019; Derrick et al, 2019; Sterrett-Hong et al, 2021).…”