Effect of post-weaning isolation on anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors of C57BL/6J mice

Abstract

Effects of post-weaning isolation on depressive- and anxiety-like behaviors in rodents have been well studied in the past. However, few studies included both sexes in a single experiment to study the sex difference in this animal model. The present study investigated the effect of post-weaning isolation on anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors in both male and female C57BL/6 J mice. Mice were individually or grouped housed from postnatal day 21 for 5 weeks until behavioral tests began. The results showed that social isolation resulted in increased anxiety in the open field. Isolated-reared female, but not male mice showed an increased transition between two compartments in the light-dark box and a decreased immobile time in the forced swim test. We conclude that post-weaning isolation has a sex-specific effect on emotional behaviors.

Sex and Time-of-Day Impact on Anxiety and Passive Avoidance Memory Strategies in Mice

“…The results of the present study reveal that there are no significant sex differences in mice tested in the light-dark test at the beginning and at the end of the light phase (test period: ZT0-2.5 and ZT9.5-12) of the 12/12cycle. Similarly, other studies performed at some points of the beginning-middle [ZT2-ZT5 (Võikar et al, 2001) and ZT3.5-6.5 (Huang et al, 2017)] or middle-end period of the light phase [ZT5-10 (Salari and Amani, 2017)] revealed no significant differences between male and female mice in parameters tested in the light-dark test. These findings were also confirmed by some other studies that did not specify the exact period of the light phase when the experiments were performed (Ding et al, 2014;Tucker et al, 2017;Yokota et al, 2017).…”

“…Although female C57BL/J6 mice exhibited longer latency than males to enter the dark chamber in the light-dark test (Adamec et al, 2006), most of the studies have proven that there are no sex differences in the time that animals spent in the dark compartment among the following strains of mice: C57BL/6J (Adamec et al, 2006;Huang et al, 2017;Tucker et al, 2017), C57BL/6 (Ding et al, 2014), C57BL/6N (Yokota et al, 2017), NMRI (Salari and Amani, 2017), 1129S2/SvHsd, and C57BL/6JOlaHsd mice (Võikar et al, 2001). However, some other studies have suggested that female C57BL/6J (Carreira et al, 2017) and Swiss-Kunming strain (Guo et al, 2004) mice show higher preferences for the dark compartment.…”

Three-Week Treadmill Exercise Enhances Persistent Inward Currents, Facilitates Dendritic Plasticity, and Upregulates the Excitability of Dorsal Raphe Serotonin Neurons in ePet-EYFP Mice

“…Early anxiety disorders associated with exposure to stress in childhood may be a marker of dysregulated stress responses (Espejo et al, 2007 ). Huang et al ( 2017 ) found that postweaning isolation resulted in increased anxiety-like behaviors and had a sex-specific effect on emotional behaviors. Sargin et al ( 2016 ) further revealed that serotonin-producing nerve cells were dramatically less active in early isolated mice and blocking small-conductance Ca 2+ -activated K + (SK3) channels could reverse these anxiety/depressive-like behaviors.…”

Reward Circuitry and Motivational Deficits in Social Anxiety Disorder: What Can Be Learned From Mouse Models?

“…Social isolation paradigms involve the separation of experimental animals into individual housing during weaning until adulthood. Isolation functionally prevents normative social interaction over the course of development, ultimately producing anxiety-like behaviors that appear to be socially specific, such as avoidance of conspecifics, increased ultrasonic vocalizations (i.e., calls of distress to other conspecifics), and reduced approach-related behaviors to novel mice (Huang et al, 2017). However, social isolation has also been shown to increase general anxietylike behaviors such as a novelty-induced avoidance, decreased environmental exploration, and reduced time spent in vulnerable positions (e.g., open portions of a plus maze; Barnes et al, 2017;Huang et al, 2017;Caruso et al, 2018).…”

“…Isolation functionally prevents normative social interaction over the course of development, ultimately producing anxiety-like behaviors that appear to be socially specific, such as avoidance of conspecifics, increased ultrasonic vocalizations (i.e., calls of distress to other conspecifics), and reduced approach-related behaviors to novel mice (Huang et al, 2017). However, social isolation has also been shown to increase general anxietylike behaviors such as a novelty-induced avoidance, decreased environmental exploration, and reduced time spent in vulnerable positions (e.g., open portions of a plus maze; Barnes et al, 2017;Huang et al, 2017;Caruso et al, 2018). Further, socially isolated mice have been shown to display higher locomotor activity, longer rates of immobility in tail suspension tests, increased adipose mass, and increased voluntary ethanol consumption later in life (Lopez et al, 2011;Sun et al, 2014;Lopez and Laber, 2015;Ieraci et al, 2016).…”