TY - JOUR PY - 2016// TI - Social involvement modulates the response to novel and adverse life events in mice JO - PLoS one A1 - Colnaghi, Luca A1 - Clemenza, Kelly A1 - Groleau, Sarah E. A1 - Weiss, Shira A1 - Snyder, Anna M. A1 - Lopez-Rosas, Mariana A1 - Levine, Amir A. SP - e0163077 EP - e0163077 VL - 11 IS - 9 N2 - Epidemiological findings suggest that social involvement plays a major role in establishing resilience to adversity, however, the neurobiology by which social involvement confers protection is not well understood. Hypothesizing that social involvement confers resilience by changing the way adverse life events are encoded, we designed a series of behavioral tests in mice that utilize the presence or absence of conspecific cage mates in measuring response to novel and adverse events. We found that the presence of cage mates increased movement after exposure to a novel environment, increased time spent in the open arms of the elevated plus maze, and decreased freezing time after a foot shock as well as expedited fear extinction, therefore significantly changing the response to adversity. This is a first description of a mouse model for the effects of social involvement on adverse life events. Understanding how social involvement provides resilience to adversity may contribute to the future treatment and prevention of mental and physical illness.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1932-6203 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163077 ID - ref1 ER -