Abstract:Objective: To evaluate the effects of sleep restriction during pregnancy on maternal care and maternal aggression in a rodent model. Methods: Twenty-three female Wistar rats were assigned to one of two groups: control (n=12) or sleep restriction (n=11) during the entire pregnancy. At the fifth postpartum day, the animals were subjected to the resident-intruder paradigm and to the pup retrieval test. Results: Sleep restriction during pregnancy had no direct effects on maternal care. Regarding aggressive behavio… Show more
“…These findings suggest that sleep deprivation lowers the threshold of interoceptive sensitivity of brain homeostatic systems, enhancing the threat-response system and affecting the interpretation of pro-social and antisocial cues (Goldstein-Piekarski et al, 2015, Simon et al, 2015). Findings from the animal literature are also supportive of this model, suggesting that deprivation of rapid eye movement sleep in pregnant rats increases defensive aggression and reduces the threshold for responding to potentially hostile stimuli (Pires et al, 2015). Overall, our findings are consistent with these data in animals and humans, suggesting that the accuracy of detecting facial displays that communicate clear and present danger may be more robust against sleep deprivation than those involved in detecting social and affiliative emotions.…”
Emotional processing is particularly sensitive to sleep deprivation, but research on the topic has been limited and prior studies have generally evaluated only a circumscribed subset of emotion categories. Here, we evaluated the effects of one night of sleep deprivation and a night of subsequent recovery sleep on the ability to identify the six most widely agreed upon basic emotion categories (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger). Healthy adults (29 males; 25 females) classified a series of 120 standard facial expressions that were computer morphed with their most highly confusable expression counterparts to create continua of expressions that differed in discriminability between emotion categories (e.g., combining 70% happiness+30% surprise; 90% surprise+10% fear). Accuracy at identifying the dominant emotion for each morph was assessed after a normal night of sleep, again following a night of total sleep deprivation, and finally after a night of recovery sleep. Sleep deprivation was associated with significantly reduced accuracy for identifying the expressions of happiness and sadness in the morphed faces. Gender differences in accuracy were not observed and none of the other emotions showed significant changes as a function of sleep loss. Accuracy returned to baseline after recovery sleep. Findings suggest that sleep deprivation adversely affects the recognition of subtle facial cues of happiness and sadness, the two emotions that are most relevant to highly evolved prosocial interpersonal interactions involving affiliation and empathy, while the recognition of other more primitive survival-oriented emotional face cues may be relatively robust against sleep loss.
“…These findings suggest that sleep deprivation lowers the threshold of interoceptive sensitivity of brain homeostatic systems, enhancing the threat-response system and affecting the interpretation of pro-social and antisocial cues (Goldstein-Piekarski et al, 2015, Simon et al, 2015). Findings from the animal literature are also supportive of this model, suggesting that deprivation of rapid eye movement sleep in pregnant rats increases defensive aggression and reduces the threshold for responding to potentially hostile stimuli (Pires et al, 2015). Overall, our findings are consistent with these data in animals and humans, suggesting that the accuracy of detecting facial displays that communicate clear and present danger may be more robust against sleep deprivation than those involved in detecting social and affiliative emotions.…”
Emotional processing is particularly sensitive to sleep deprivation, but research on the topic has been limited and prior studies have generally evaluated only a circumscribed subset of emotion categories. Here, we evaluated the effects of one night of sleep deprivation and a night of subsequent recovery sleep on the ability to identify the six most widely agreed upon basic emotion categories (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger). Healthy adults (29 males; 25 females) classified a series of 120 standard facial expressions that were computer morphed with their most highly confusable expression counterparts to create continua of expressions that differed in discriminability between emotion categories (e.g., combining 70% happiness+30% surprise; 90% surprise+10% fear). Accuracy at identifying the dominant emotion for each morph was assessed after a normal night of sleep, again following a night of total sleep deprivation, and finally after a night of recovery sleep. Sleep deprivation was associated with significantly reduced accuracy for identifying the expressions of happiness and sadness in the morphed faces. Gender differences in accuracy were not observed and none of the other emotions showed significant changes as a function of sleep loss. Accuracy returned to baseline after recovery sleep. Findings suggest that sleep deprivation adversely affects the recognition of subtle facial cues of happiness and sadness, the two emotions that are most relevant to highly evolved prosocial interpersonal interactions involving affiliation and empathy, while the recognition of other more primitive survival-oriented emotional face cues may be relatively robust against sleep loss.
“…Indeed, some articles have already evaluated grooming following sleep deprivation (Andersen et al, 2005;Nunes et al, 2012;Pires et al, 2012a;Pires et al, 2013Pires et al, , 2015a. In respect of the methods currently available to evaluate grooming behavior, one could think of three possible alternatives: the classical evaluation by latency, frequency and duration of this behavior (Andersen et al, 2005); the use of self-cleaning indexes (Nunes et al, 2012) and the use of the grooming analysis algorithm Tuohimaa, 2004, 2005a, b).…”
“…Maternal care is crucial for the adequate development of the pups and this type of behavior can be classified as any action taken by the mother in order to nourish, soothe and protect the pups (Kristal, 2009;Pires, Tufik, & Andersen, 2015). In addition to provide nutrition and safety, it is essential to ensure the necessary stimuli for development (Caldji et al, 1998;Meaney, 2001), since it was already been observed that variations in the maternal behavior (MB) can modulate the neuroendocrine and psychological development, as well as the responses to stress (Francis, Diorio, Liu, & Meaney, 1999;Nephew & Murgatroyd, 2013;Weaver et al, 2004).…”
Section: Abstract: Early Life Stress; Maternal Behavior; Maternal Sepmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The behaviors N, L, C and R were categorized as maternal behaviors because they impact directly on the pup, and can provide physical and emotional care (Pires et al, 2015). Furthermore, no interaction with the pups (X) and eating/drinking (E) were considered as behaviors not related with maternal care.…”
Maternal care is essential for an adequate pup development, as well as for the health of the dam. Exposure to stress in early stages of life can disrupt this dam-pup relationship promoting altered neurobiological and behavioral phenotypes. However, there is a lack of consensus regarding the effects of daily maternal separation (MS) on the pattern of maternal behavior. The aim of this study is to compare the patterns of maternal behavior between mice exposed to MS and controls. BALB/c mice were subjected to MS for a period of 180 min/day from postnatal day 2-7 (n = 17) or designated to be standard animal facility reared (AFR) controls (n = 19). Maternal behaviors were computed as frequency of nursing, licking pups and contact with pups, and nonmaternal behaviors were computed as frequency of actions without interaction with pups and eating/drinking. A total of 18 daily observations of maternal behavior were conducted during these six days, and considering the proportion of maternal and nonmaternal behaviors, an index was calculated. There was no difference when comparing the global index of maternal behavior between the AFR and MS animals by the end of the observed period. However, the pattern of maternal behavior between groups was significantly different. While MS dams presented low frequency of maternal behavior within the first couple days of the stress protocol, but increasing over time, AFR dams showed higher maternal behavior at the beginning, reducing over time. Together, our results indicate that MS alters the maternal behavior of the dams toward pups throughout the first week of the stress protocol and provoked some anxiety-related traits in the dams. The inversion of maternal behavior pattern could possibly be an attempt to compensate the low levels of maternal care observed in the first days of MS.
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