Social exclusion mouse modeling

Abstract

The quality of social interaction is a substantial factor to maintain and improve well-being in social life. The importance of quality of social interaction has been relatively little interest yet, although the effect of quantity of it has been aggressively reported. The social exclusion mouse model is necessary to understand the importance of the quality of the social interaction of humans in real life. However, the relevant mouse model does not exist. The goal of this research is to develop a social exclusion mouse model and suggest an underlying effect on rodent brain. For this purpose, we designed an explainable mouse model and characterized behavior phenotype. During empathy-like behavior test, observational fear conditioning test (OFC), mice demonstrated decreased neural activity in the left dentate gyrus (DG) and left basolateral amygdala (BLA), and more segregated functional network modules, which includes both of the regions. When the functional module was constructed by using the temporal dynamic data obtained from the LFP electrodes, the new module composed of DG and BLA was confirmed as in vitro results. In addition, we observed reduced neuronal excitability of granule cells (GD) in the left DG, but not of principal cells (P cells) in the left BLA in the model mice. Although there was no difference in mEPSC in both regions, mIPSC amplitude and its frequency were increased in left DG and left BLA, respectively. We expect that this research would help us to understand the phenomenon and effect of social exclusion.