Studying dominance and aggression requires ethologically relevant paradigms

Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2024 Apr 30;86:102879. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2024.102879. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTAlthough aggression is associated with several psychiatric disorders, there is no effective treatment nor a rigorous definition for "pathological aggression". Mice make a valuable model for studying aggression. They have a dynamic social structure that depends on the habitat and includes reciprocal interactions between the mice's aggression levels, social dominance hierarchy (SDH), and resource allocation. Nevertheless, the classical behavioral tests for territorial aggression and SDH in mice are reductive and have limited ethological and translational relevance. Recent work has explored the use of semi-natural environments to simultaneously study dominance-related behaviors, resource allocation, and aggressive behavior. Semi-natural setups allow experimental control of the environment combined with manipulations of neural activity. We argue that these setups can help bridge the translational gap in aggression research toward discovering neuronal mechanisms underlying maladaptive aggression.PMID:38692167 | DOI:10.1016/j.conb.2024.102879
Source: Current Opinion in Neurobiology - Category: Neurology Authors: Source Type: research