Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-8-2024
Abstract
Prolonged or chronic social isolation has pronounced effects on animals, ranging from altered stress responses, increased anxiety and aggressive behaviour, and even increased mortality. The effects of shorter periods of isolation are much less well researched; however, short periods of isolation are used routinely for testing animal behaviour and physiology. Here, we studied how a 3 h period of isolation from a cagemate affected neural gene expression in three brain regions that contain important components of the social decision-making network, the hypothalamus, the nucleus taeniae of the amygdala, and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, using a gregarious bird as a model (zebra finches). We found evidence suggestive of altered neural activity, synaptic transmission, metabolism, and even potentially pain perception, all of which could create cofounding effects on experimental tests that involve isolating animals. We recommend that the effects of short-term social isolation need to be better understood and propose alternatives to isolating animals for testing.
Recommended Citation
Lopes, P.C., Chang, M., Holloway, F. et al. The effect of acute social isolation on neural molecular responses in components of the social decision-making network. BMC Genomics 25, 771 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-024-10653-z
Supplementary material
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Included in
Animal Experimentation and Research Commons, Genomics Commons, Other Genetics and Genomics Commons, Other Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in BMC Genomics, volume 25, in 2024. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-024-10653-z
This article was the recipient of a Chapman University Supporting Open Access Research and Scholarship (SOARS) award.