Deficits in Social Behavior Precede Cognitive Decline in Middle-Aged Mice

An extensive literature details deterioration of multiple brain functions, especially memory and learning, during aging in humans and in rodents. In contrast, the decline of social functions is less well understood. It is presently not clear whether age-dependent deficits observed in social behavior mainly reflect the disruption of social networks activity or are simply secondary to a more general impairment of cognitive and executive functions in older individuals. To address this issue, we carried out a battery of behavioral tasks exploring different brain functions in young (3 months) and middle-aged wild-type mice (9 months). Consistent with previous reports, our results show no obvious differences between these two groups in most of the domains investigated including learning and memory. Surprisingly, in social tasks, middle-aged animals showed significantly reduced levels of interactions when exposed to a new juvenile mouse. In the absence of overt cognitive decline, our findings suggest that social impairments may precede the disruption of other brain functions and argue for a selective vulnerability of social circuits during aging.