Topic: Female Mice

Sex Differences in Learning from Exploration

Sex-based modulation of cognitive processes could set the stage for individual differences in vulnerability to neuropsychiatric disorders. While value-based decision making processes in particular have been proposed to be influenced by sex differences, the overall correct performance in decision making tasks often show variable or minimal differences across sexes. Computational tools allow us to uncover latent variables that define different decision making approaches, even in animals with similar correct performance. Here, we quantify sex differences in mice in the latent variables underlying behavior in a classic value-based decision making task: a restless two-armed bandit. While male and female mice had similar accuracy, they achieved this performance via different patterns of exploration. Male mice tended to make more exploratory choices overall, largely because they appeared to get ‘stuck’ in exploration once they had started. Female mice tended to explore less but learned more quickly during exploration. Together, these results suggest that sex exerts stronger influences on decision making during periods of learning and exploration than during stable choices. Exploration during decision making is altered in people diagnosed with addictions, depression, and neurodevelopmental disabilities, pinpointing the neural mechanisms of exploration as a highly translational avenue for conferring sex-modulated vulnerability to neuropsychiatric diagnoses.

Social transmission of maternal behavior

Maternal care is profoundly important for mammalian survival, and in many species requires the contribution of non-biological parents, or alloparents. In the absence of partum and post-partum related hormonal changes, alloparents acquire maternal skills from experience, by yet unknown mechanisms. One critical molecular signal for maternal behavior is oxytocin, a hormone centrally released by hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN). Do experiences that induce maternal behavior act by engaging PVN oxytocin neurons? To answer this, we used virgin female mice, animals that in the wild live in colonies with experienced mothers and their pups, helping with pup care. We replicated this setup in the lab, and we continuously monitored homecage behavior of virgin mice co-housed for days with a mother and litter, synchronized with recordings from virgin PVN cells, including from oxytocin neurons. Mothers engaged virgins in maternal care in part by shepherding virgins towards the nest, ensuring their proximity to pups, and in part by self-generating pup retrieval episodes, demonstrating maternal behavior to virgins. The frequency of shepherding and of dam retrievals correlates with virgin's subsequent ability to retrieve pups, a quintessential mouse maternal skill. These social interactions activated virgin PVN and gated behaviorally-relevant cortical plasticity for pup vocalizations. Thus, rodents can acquire maternal behavior by social transmission, and our results describe a mechanism for adapting brains of adult caregivers to infant needs via endogenous oxytocin.

Adaptability of tuberoinfundibular dopamine (TIDA) neuron electrical activity in female mice: The role of estradiol in the neuroendocrine control of prolactin

Anxiety levels after vicarious social defeat stress are associated with vulnerability and resilience to cocaine-induced conditioned place preference in female mice

Beneficial effects of prolonged 2-phenylethyl alcohol inhalation on altered feeding behavior and neural activity in chronically distressed female mice

Effects of reproductive status on cognitive function and behavioral flexibility of female mice in the Intellicage home cage environment

Expression of c-Fos in the vCA1, dCA2, chemosensory amygdala and reward system of female mice induced by male pheromonal signals

Impaired cognition and behavior associate with changes in the brain endocannabinoid-dependent synaptic plasticity of adult female mice after binge drinking during adolescence

Increased oxidative stress as a common mechanism for different prenatal stressors: long-term effects on adolescent male and female mice

Long-term Effects of Maternal Separation on alcohol intake and acute stress response in male and female mice

Motherhood changes the processing and response to social cues of female mice

Neurobiological consequences of the adolescent exposure to the synthetic cannabinoid JWH-018 in male and female mice

Nicotinic receptors promote susceptibility to social stress in female mice linked with neuroadaptations within VTA dopamine neurons

Poor attentional control as a biomarker of vulnerability to nicotine addiction in male but not in female mice

BET protein inhibition in macrophages enhances dorsal root ganglion neurite outgrowth in female mice

Study of the antinociceptive effect of morphine evaluated by a neuropathic pain model in male and female mice

Studying the role of CB1 receptors on memory and navigation in male and female mice

Vascular and blood-brain barrier-related changes underlie stress responses and resilience in female mice and depression in human tissue