Differing effects of familiarity/kinship in the social transmission of fear associations and food preferences in rats

Agee, Laura A.; Jones, Carolyn E.; Monfils, Marie‐H.

doi:10.1007/s10071-019-01292-z

Cited by 15 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 23 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is unclear why unfamiliar males exhibited weaker coordination of freezing. However, it is consistent with the studies on observational fear learning, fear conditioning by proxy, and fear buffering, in which social modulation of threat response was more robust in familiar conspecific (Jeon, Kim et al 2010, Kiyokawa, Honda et al 2014, Pisansky, Hanson et al 2017, Agee, Jones et al 2019). Interestingly, in this study, familiarity had no effect on synchrony in females, which may reflect sex differences in emotional perception of unfamiliar conspecific.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Sex differences in social synchronization of conditioned fear

Ito

Morozov

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Coordinated behaviors are prevalent in the animal kingdom as they promote the survival of social specie. Meanwhile, the distinct social roles of males and females predict sex differences in behavioral coordination. Because of its complexity, behavioral coordination and the underlying circuits have not been studied extensively in laboratory animals. Recently, we established a mouse model of social synchronization of conditioned fear, which revealed a sex difference and identified the ventral hippocampus to the amygdala pathway as the integrator of the affective and social information. Here, we investigated the sex differences further by manipulating the social cues or emotional state. Familiarity with social cues increased fear synchrony in male but not female dyads. The emotional distress from brief immobilization disrupted fear synchrony in males but enhanced it in females. Finally, inactivation of the ventral hippocampus abolished fear synchrony in both sexes but elicited negative synchrony in females only. These findings reveal that conspecific identity and emotional state are sex-specific modulators of social synchrony, suggesting sex-specific functions within the socio-emotional integrator, which includes the ventral hippocampus and yet unknown circuits.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Sex differences in social synchronization of conditioned fear

Ito

Morozov

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We found that while both Demonstrator (t 16 = 2.204, p = 0.04265) and Observer (t 16 = 3.105, p = 0.0068) rats showed a significant preference for the diet Cin based on the percent eaten, neither Demonstrators (t 16 = 0.476, p = 0.641) nor Observers (t 15 = 1.885, p = 0.079) spent significantly more time interacting with the diet Cin food cup (see Fig 6a,b). The lack of difference between Observers and their Demonstrators can likely be explained by: (1) a slight innate preference for diet Cin over diet Co, as past research in our lab has found in Sprague-Dawleys [14], and (2) our decision to only use diet Cin as the demonstrated flavor in an attempt to decrease variance in the behavioral experience of our observers and (3) the brevity of the choice test compared to our standard design (10 minutes vs 1 hour). It is also worth noting that the Cohen’s d effect size for the Observer’s preference towards cinnamon (d = 0.75) is larger than the effect size calculated for Demonstrators (d = 0.53), though both fall into the category of medium effect sizes.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Past research from our lab has indicated that there is a strong relationship between the amount of fear displayed by observers at the long-term memory test and the time spent interacting with their Demonstrator during the CS in males [13] and after the CS in females [14,26]. As such, videos of the social acquisition phase of fear-conditioning by proxy were scored for social interaction between the Observer and Demonstrator for each 20 second period during the CS presentation and the 20 second period immediately following each CS presentation to provide a secondary index of fear acquisition.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, percent freezing to the cue on the final day was not used for Observer rats because our results and the results of our follow up experiment (see Supporting Information data) indicated that the conditions of our behavioral testing procedure resulted in some freezing behavior even in Control rats -at least in males -and, as such, might not be the best gauge of the strength of the socially acquired fear response. As such, given our past findings that interactions with the Demonstrator during or after the CS (depending on sex) highly predicted later freezing to the cue [12][13][14], interaction with the Demonstrator at the sex appropriate timepoint was tested for correlations against nuclear Arc activity rather than freezing to the cue on the final day for Observer rats. For Demonstrators, a similar metric was calculated based on standardized freezing to the cue on the final day and the percent of total eaten that was the familiar diet (Diet Cin) and checked against dual Arc activity.…”

Section: Arc Statistical Analysis Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the primary methods we have for exploring such mechanisms are non-human animal models. In rodent species, fear-based social learning has been demonstrated to occur under multiple conditions, including: (1) context or stimulus associated fear acquired by observation through a barrier of a conspecific experiencing pain in a novel environment or following the presentation of a novel stimulus [7,8], (2) enhanced acquisition of natural behaviors by observation of a conspecific responding to a threatening stimuli [9][10][11], and (3) by observation of a fear conditioned demonstrator reacting to the fear-associated stimuli post-conditioning in a paradigm known as fear conditioning by-proxy (FCbP) [12][13][14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Patterns of Arc mRNA expression in the rat brain following dual recall of fear- and reward-based socially acquired information

Agee

Hilz

Jun

et al. 2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The ability to learn new information and behaviors is a vital component of survival in most animal species. This learning can occur via direct experience or through observation of another individual (i.e., social learning). While research focused on understanding the neural mechanisms of direct learning is prevalent, less work has aimed at understanding the brain circuitry mediating the acquisition and recall of socially acquired information. We aimed to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying recall of socially acquired information by having rats sequentially recall a socially transmitted food preference (STFP) and a fear association via fear conditioning by-proxy (FCbP). Brain tissue was processed for mRNA expression of the immediate early gene (IEG) Arc, which reliably expresses in the cell nucleus following transcription before migrating to the cytoplasm over the next 25 minutes. Given this timeframe, we were able to identify whether Arc transcription was triggered by STFP recall, FCbP recall, or following recall of both memories. Surprisingly - and contrary to past research examining expression of other IEGs following STFP or FCbP recall separately - we found no differences in any of the Arc expression measures across a number of prefrontal regions and the vCA3 of the hippocampus between controls, demonstrators, and observers, though we did detect an overall effect of sex in a number of regions. We theorize that these results may indicate that relatively little Arc-dependent neural restructuring is taking place in the prefrontal cortices following recall of a recently socially acquired information or directly acquired fear associations in these areas.

show abstract

Social Transfer of Fear in Rodents

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social transfer of fear is a potent tool facilitating response to danger in animals forming social groups. With many factors influencing the transfer-such as proximity of the animal receiving information to the donor, familiarity, proximity of danger, and species-specific coping strategies-it allows studies of neuronal correlates of a variety of behavioral responses. Since both the transfer of fear and social modulation of fear responses are impaired in many neuropsychological disorders, the models described in this article could be useful in disentangling the neuronal circuitry involved in the pathogenesis of these disorders. C 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Basic Protocol 1: Imminent threat in rats Alternate Protocol 1: Imminent threat in mice Basic Protocol 2: Remote threat in rats Alternate Protocol 2: Remote threat in mice Basic Protocol 3: Social modulation of fear extinction in rats Alternate Protocol 3: Social modulation of fear extinction in mice Keywords: fear contagion r imminent threat r observational/vicarious fear learning r remote threat r social fear transfer

show abstract

Differing effects of familiarity/kinship in the social transmission of fear associations and food preferences in rats

Cited by 15 publications

References 23 publications

Sex differences in social synchronization of conditioned fear

Sex differences in social synchronization of conditioned fear

Patterns of Arc mRNA expression in the rat brain following dual recall of fear- and reward-based socially acquired information

Social Transfer of Fear in Rodents

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About