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Brief and long maternal separation in C57Bl6J mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring

INTRODUCTION: Animal models, especially rodents, have become instrumental to experimentally investigate the effects of an adverse post-natal environment on the developing brain. For this purpose, maternal separation (MS) paradigms have been widely used in the last decades. Nonetheless, how MS affect...

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Autores principales: Rombaut, Cynthia, Roura-Martinez, David, Lepolard, Catherine, Gascon, Eduardo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10626007/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37936649
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1269866
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author Rombaut, Cynthia
Roura-Martinez, David
Lepolard, Catherine
Gascon, Eduardo
author_facet Rombaut, Cynthia
Roura-Martinez, David
Lepolard, Catherine
Gascon, Eduardo
author_sort Rombaut, Cynthia
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Animal models, especially rodents, have become instrumental to experimentally investigate the effects of an adverse post-natal environment on the developing brain. For this purpose, maternal separation (MS) paradigms have been widely used in the last decades. Nonetheless, how MS affects maternal behavior and, ultimately, the offspring depend on multiple variables. METHODS: To gain further insights into the consequences of MS, we decided to thoroughly measure and compare the effects of short (15 min, 3 times/day) vs. long (3 h, 1 time/day) separation on multiple maternally-associated behaviors and across the entire post-natal period. RESULTS: Compared to unhandled control litters, our results confirmed previous studies and indicated that SMS enhanced the time and variety of maternal care whereas LMS resulted in poor caregiving. We also showed that SMS-accrued caregiving persisted during the whole post-natal period. In contrast, LMS effects on maternal behavior were restricted to the early life (P2-P10). Finally, we also analyzed the behavioral consequences of these different rearing social environments on the offspring. We found that MS has profound effects in social tasks. We showed that affiliative touch, a type of prosocial behavior that provides comfort to others, is particularly sensitive to the modification of maternal caregiving. DISCUSSION: Our results provide further support to the contention that interactions during the early post-natal period critically contribute to emotional processing and brain co-construction.
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spelling pubmed-106260072023-11-07 Brief and long maternal separation in C57Bl6J mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring Rombaut, Cynthia Roura-Martinez, David Lepolard, Catherine Gascon, Eduardo Front Behav Neurosci Behavioral Neuroscience INTRODUCTION: Animal models, especially rodents, have become instrumental to experimentally investigate the effects of an adverse post-natal environment on the developing brain. For this purpose, maternal separation (MS) paradigms have been widely used in the last decades. Nonetheless, how MS affects maternal behavior and, ultimately, the offspring depend on multiple variables. METHODS: To gain further insights into the consequences of MS, we decided to thoroughly measure and compare the effects of short (15 min, 3 times/day) vs. long (3 h, 1 time/day) separation on multiple maternally-associated behaviors and across the entire post-natal period. RESULTS: Compared to unhandled control litters, our results confirmed previous studies and indicated that SMS enhanced the time and variety of maternal care whereas LMS resulted in poor caregiving. We also showed that SMS-accrued caregiving persisted during the whole post-natal period. In contrast, LMS effects on maternal behavior were restricted to the early life (P2-P10). Finally, we also analyzed the behavioral consequences of these different rearing social environments on the offspring. We found that MS has profound effects in social tasks. We showed that affiliative touch, a type of prosocial behavior that provides comfort to others, is particularly sensitive to the modification of maternal caregiving. DISCUSSION: Our results provide further support to the contention that interactions during the early post-natal period critically contribute to emotional processing and brain co-construction. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC10626007/ /pubmed/37936649 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1269866 Text en Copyright © 2023 Rombaut, Roura-Martinez, Lepolard and Gascon. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Behavioral Neuroscience
Rombaut, Cynthia
Roura-Martinez, David
Lepolard, Catherine
Gascon, Eduardo
Brief and long maternal separation in C57Bl6J mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring
title Brief and long maternal separation in C57Bl6J mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring
title_full Brief and long maternal separation in C57Bl6J mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring
title_fullStr Brief and long maternal separation in C57Bl6J mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring
title_full_unstemmed Brief and long maternal separation in C57Bl6J mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring
title_short Brief and long maternal separation in C57Bl6J mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring
title_sort brief and long maternal separation in c57bl6j mice: behavioral consequences for the dam and the offspring
topic Behavioral Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10626007/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37936649
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1269866
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