Socially dominant mice in C57BL6 background show increased social motivation.

Socially dominant mice in C57BL6 background show increased social motivation.
Behav Brain Res. 2017 Aug 28;:
Authors: Kunkel T, Wang H
Abstract
A series of behavioral tests measuring social dominance, social motivation, and non-social motivation are examined in adult male C57BL6 mice. By using the well-known tube dominance test to determine social dominance and rank, we find that, in the absence of competition for resource and mating, group-housed mouse cage-mates display stable and mostly linear and transitive social hierarchies. Mice with top and bottom social ranks are subjected to a three-chamber social interaction test to measure social motivation. The top ranked mice spend more time interacting with a stranger mouse than the bottom ranked mice, suggesting that social dominance may positively influence social motivation. When subjected to a novel environment, mice with different social ranks show similar locomotion and exploring activity in the open field test, suggesting no detectable difference in certain aspects of non-social motivation. These results demonstrate a behavioral correlation between social dominance and social motivation.
PMID: 28859999 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Behavioural Brain Research - August 28, 2017 Category: Neurology Authors: Kunkel T, Wang H Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research