Many animal model studies of developmental chemical exposure point to social behavior as a target of toxicity. However, these studies in animals have only measured "negative" social behaviors like aggression to evaluate the consequences of early life chemical exposure on this type of function. I'm wondering if there is evidence in the literature of pro-social behavior being equally sensitive to early life brain insults?
This would, of course, an interesting question to answer. The main problem I see is with parsing sociality from e.g. anxiety, since social interaction with unknown conspecifics is stressful to many animals. Perhaps a multibehavioral approach could be used, with rough-and-tumble play in adolescent rodents, social interaction in adult animals (rodents, zebrafish) as well as aggression in adults.
This is actually an area that my laboratory focuses on. We have demonstrated, for example, that early life exposure of rats to SSRI antidepressants disrupts behaviors such as preference for a conspecific animal and juvenile play behavior. Other groups have demonstrated similar effects of early life exposure to valproic acid or to a nonselective serotonin receptor agonist.
Thanks Caio and Ian for your feedback. I will consider this when designing my experiments on pro-social behavior. We do use a broad battery of tests that include open field activity, plus maze, and other lab devices that should provide the needed info to help dissociate stress effects from poorer pro-social behavior in our Mn rat model.
- Badges
- Science topic