Quantifying mouse social behavior

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Quantifying mouse social behavior S. E. Roian Egnor1*, Shay Ohayon2, Pietro Perona2 and Adam Taylor1 1 Howard Hughes Medical Institute - Janelia Farm Research Campus, United States 2 Caltech, United States Humans are social creatures, and deficits that impair social interaction can be much more disruptive to individual, family and society, than similarly severe sensory or motor deficits. This makes research into social deficits particularly urgent, but this urgency is hampered by the increased difficulty of modeling complex human social interactions with mouse behavior. Characterizing a social deficit requires first that you have a good idea of what a socially normal mouse looks like. This is partially complicated by the fact that one of the reasons that the mouse is so globally successful is that it is extremely plastic in the types of social behavior it can display. Mice can be successful at very low and very high population densities, deploying the same genetics to handle almost no social interactions or continual social interactions. Social relationships in mice develop over the course of many days, but standard tests of social competence are often brief, involving observation of two mice introduced into a cage for a short period. In addition, standard mouse husbandry allows only a fraction of the full mouse repertoire to be observed in the lab and the social and sexual isolation common in mouse husbandry practice can introduce repetitive/anxiety-related behaviors that may obscure natural behavior. To describe normal mouse social behavior in a quantitative way we have developed a video--based method to track the position and identity of group-housed male and female mice in a 60 cm x 60 cm enclosure over multiple days. Mice are bleach marked to allow unambiguous identification. Four ultrasonic microphones record vocalizations continuously during social interactions. Keywords: Mouse, tracking, trajectory, vocalization Conference: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012. Presentation Type: Invited Symposium (only for people who have been invited to a particular symposium) Topic: Social Behavior Citation: Egnor S, Ohayon S, Perona P and Taylor A (2012). Quantifying mouse social behavior. Conference Abstract: Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00051 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 02 May 2012; Published Online: 07 Jul 2012. * Correspondence: Dr. S. E. Roian Egnor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute - Janelia Farm Research Campus, Ashburn, United States, roian.egnor@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers S. E. Roian Egnor Shay Ohayon Pietro Perona Adam Taylor Google S. E. Roian Egnor Shay Ohayon Pietro Perona Adam Taylor Google Scholar S. E. Roian Egnor Shay Ohayon Pietro Perona Adam Taylor PubMed S. E. Roian Egnor Shay Ohayon Pietro Perona Adam Taylor Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.