Social Communication in Mice – Are There Optimal Cage Conditions?

Abstract

Social communication is heavily affected in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders. Accordingly, mouse models designed to study the mechanisms leading to these disorders are tested for this phenotypic trait. Test conditions vary between different models, and the effect of these test conditions on the quantity and quality of social interactions and ultrasonic communication is unknown. The present study examines to which extent the habituation time to the test cage as well as the shape / size of the cage influence social communication in freely interacting mice. We tested 8 pairs of male mice in free dyadic social interactions, with two habituation times (20 min and 30 min) and three cage formats (rectangle, round, square). We tested the effect of these conditions on the different types of social contacts, approach-escape sequences, follow behavior, and the time each animal spent in the vision field of the other one, as well as on the emission of ultrasonic vocalizations and their contexts of emission. We provide for the first time an integrated analysis of the social interaction behavior and ultrasonic vocalizations. Surprisingly, we did not highlight any significant effect of habituation time and cage shape / size on the behavioral events examined. There was only a slight increase of social interactions with the longer habituation time in the round cage. Remarkably, we also showed that vocalizations were emitted during specific behavioral sequences especially during close contact or approach behaviors. The present study provides a protocol reliably eliciting social contacts and ultrasonic vocalizations in adult male mice. This protocol is therefore well adapted for standardized investigation of social interactions in mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Contextual Modulation of Vocal Behavior in Mouse: Newly Identified 12 kHz “Mid-Frequency” Vocalization Emitted during Restraint

“…During social encounters mice typically emit more USVs when they are in physical contact with one another (Ferhat et al, 2015 ). Several studies have investigated how different contexts affect the emission of USVs in mice.…”

Sex differences in vocalizations to familiar or unfamiliar females in mice

“…According to previous studies [10,25,26], we conducted recordings without the devocalization of female encounters under natural conditions. Previous experiments suggested that most vocalizations are produced by the resident subjects and that the vocal contribution of female encounters is very limited in the male-female and female-female contexts [27][28][29].…”

Neuroanatomy and Behaviour in Mice with a Haploinsufficiency of AT-Rich Interactive Domain 1B (ARID1B) Throughout Development

“…One of the earlier Arid1b +/models reported by Celen et al, described longer call durations and reduced pitch frequency while our report focused on the standard parameter of call number 17 . While a large number of studies report these vocalizations play a significant role in pup retrieval, and pups' ability to thrive 74 , there is much debate about their function and their translational relevance in genetic mouse models, made using congenic inbred mice beyond the existence of the calls, especially since in mice these calls are innate over learned [75][76][77][78][79] . The number of call emissions as pups is known to be greater in outbred strains, differ across inbred strains, days of post-development, and cage conditions leaving numerous possibilities for the differing results.…”