Abstract
The understanding of individual diversity and its link to brain functions is a fundamental issue in neurobiology. Studies in mice have mainly focused on the investigation of behavior traits in adulthood, whereas longitudinal analyses are largely uninvestigated. Here we have conducted systematic behavior tests in individual mice (C57BL6/J, male), comparing phenotypes at early postnatal stages and in adulthood. Each animal showed different scores in individual behavior tests. However, we observed an inverse correlation between repetitive behavior in the Morris water maze test and sociability in the 3-chamber social interaction test; an increase in repetitive behaviors was associated with poor sociability. In longitudinal analyses, the emission of ultrasonic vocalization during maternal separation at postnatal day 6 in pups was correlated positively with sociability and negatively with spatial memory. Our results show a possibility that individual differences in communication between pups and their mother in infancy is a predictive indicator for sociability and cognitive performance as an adult.
Highlights
How personality develops over a lifetime and how it interacts with specific cognitive traits in adulthood have been important issues in psychology, which have come into focus in neuroscience
In the maternal separation-induced ultrasonic vocalization (USV) test, we counted the number of USV for 5 min after maternal separation (Fig 1C, 142.9 ± 99.7, max: 326, min: 7, normality: χ2 = 1.6918, p = 0.4292)
In the Morris water maze (MWM) test, we calculated the percentage of time spent in the original target quadrant in probe test [spatial memory (Fig 1G, 36.94 ± 14.14, max: 63.24, min: 14.33, normality: χ2 = 1.6196, p = 0.4450)], in the reversed target quadrant in reversal probe test [reversal memory (Fig 1H left, 29.64 ± 9.47, max: 44.15, min: 5.63, normality: χ2 = 4.0388, p = 0.1327)], and in the original target quadrant in reversal probe test [repetitive behavior (Fig 1H right, 28.06 ± 9.69, max: 50.76, min: 11.05, normality: χ2 = 0.7174, p = 0.6986)]
Summary
How personality develops over a lifetime and how it interacts with specific cognitive traits in adulthood have been important issues in psychology, which have come into focus in neuroscience. The nature of personality is generally defined on the basis of certain observable behavior characteristics [1]. Issues in development of personality have been addressed mainly in human studies, by observing identical twins, to understand the additive or interacting contributions of genetic and environmental variation to individual differences in behavioral development [2, 3]. Cognitive traits of inbred animal models have been used to understand “personality” at the biological level [4].
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