Abstract
Stress induced by social defeat is a strong modifier of animal anxiety and depression-like phenotypes. Self-grooming is a common rodent behavior, and has an ordered cephalo-caudal progression from licking of the paws to head, body, genitals and tail. Acute stress is known to alter grooming activity levels and disrupt its patterning. Following 15-17 days of chronic social defeat stress, grooming behavior was analyzed in adult male C57BL/6J mice exhibiting either dominant or subordinate behavior. Our study showed that subordinate mice experience higher levels of anxiety and display disorganized patterning of their grooming behaviors, which emerges as a behavioral marker of chronic social stress. These findings indicate that chronic social stress modulates grooming behavior in mice, thus illustrating the importance of grooming phenotypes for neurobehavioral stress research.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 553-559 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Behavioural Brain Research |
| Volume | 208 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2 Apr 2010 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Behavioral organization
- Chronic social defeat
- Grooming
- Mice
- Stress