The Effects of Chronic Social Defeat Stress on Mouse Grooming Behavior Patterning

Abstract

Animal social defeat stress is a strong modulator of anxiety and depression‐like states. Although grooming is a frequent behavioral marker of stress, little is known about the effects of social stress on grooming. This study explores the effects of chronic social defeat stress on mouse self‐grooming behavior. After exposing mice to 13–15 days of social defeat, grooming behavior was measured in both winner and loser mice in the novelty test. The occurrence of transitions between paw, head, body, tail and genital regions was recorded. In loser mice, chronic social defeat increased latency to grooming, and produced fewer correct transitions, grooming bouts, and vertical rears. No differences were found between winners and losers for serum corticosterone levels, duration of grooming, distance travelled, or velocity. Overall, this study describes how the stress induced by social defeat leads to an increase in anxiety‐like disruption of grooming sequencing, thus illustrating its importance as a model for high‐throughput behavioral studies.