Abstract
It has been widely established that serotonin plays important role in the regulation of emotional and social behaviour. Rodents with a genetic deletion of the serotonin reuptake transporter (SERT) are used as a model to study lifelong consequences of increased extracellular 5‐HT levels due to its impaired reuptake. SERT knock-out (SERT-KO) mice and rats consistently showed anxiety-like symptoms and social deficits. Nevertheless, the impact of SERT deletion on socioemotional ultrasonic communication has not been addressed. Here we investigated the impact of lifelong serotonin abundance on ultrasonic vocalisation accompanying social interactions and open field exploration in rats. SERT-KO rats displayed reduced overall duration of social contacts, but increased time spent on following the conspecific. The altered pattern of social behaviour in SERT-KO rats was accompanied by the structural changes in ultrasonic vocalisations, as they differed from their controls in distribution of call categories. Moreover, SERT deletion resulted in anxiety-like behaviours assessed in the open field test. Their anxious phenotype resulted in a lower tendency to emit appetitive 50-kHz calls during novelty exploration. The present study demonstrates that genetic deletion of SERT not only leads to the deficits in social interaction and increased anxiety but also affects ultrasonic communication.
Highlights
It has been widely established that serotonin plays important role in the regulation of emotional and social behaviour
The serotonin reuptake transporter (SERT)-KO rats demonstrated longer total distance travelled (t = 4.361, df = 58, p < 0.001, Student’s t-test; Fig. 1a), reduced number of rearings, (Z = 2.807, p = 0.009, MannWhitney U Test; Fig. 1b) and less time spent in the center of the open field (t = 3.863, df = 58, p = 0.001, Student’s t-test; Fig. 1c) compared to wild-type controls
The analysis of ultrasonic vocalisations (USVs) emission during the open field test revealed that the relation of 22-kHz emitting to non-emitting rats did not significantly differ between groups (SERT-WT: 11/22 and SERT knock-out (SERT-KO): 4/23, Chi2 = 2.716, NS; data not shown)
Summary
It has been widely established that serotonin plays important role in the regulation of emotional and social behaviour. SERT deletion resulted in anxiety-like behaviours assessed in the open field test Their anxious phenotype resulted in a lower tendency to emit appetitive 50-kHz calls during novelty exploration. The present study demonstrates that genetic deletion of SERT leads to the deficits in social interaction and increased anxiety and affects ultrasonic communication. The resulting short allelic variant is associated with decreased expression and function of SERT and affects emotional regulation, anxiety-related and social behaviour[22]. This human polymorphism can be mimicked by the genetic deletion of the SERT in rodents, which are used as a model to study lifelong consequences of increased extracellular 5‐HT levels due to its impaired reuptake[23]. Their anxious phenotype was confirmed in the elevated plus maze test
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