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Abstract：
Human studies suggest that healthy social relationships benefit cognition, yet little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms of this protective effect. In rodents, studies on acute isolation and environmental enrichment (EE) confirm the importance of social exposure. Despite the widely recognized importance of sociality, however, rodent models have yet to explore the independent contributions of social housing divorced of other forms of enrichment. This study dissociates the effects of social and physical enrichment on spatial learning and memory from adulthood to old age. Rats were placed in either single or group housing, provided with ample enrichment, and tested at three time points on several phases/versions of the Barnes maze (BM) (standard, retention probes, variable location, and reversal). We found that sustained social housing enhanced cognitive flexibility, as evidenced by superior acquisition of task set (standard BM), adaptability to a new task set (variable BM), and improved reversal learning (reversal BM). Long-term retention (BM retention probes) of spatial memory was unaffected by housing conditions. Recent studies from our lab, including this report, are the first to show that social housing confers cognitive benefits beyond those of physical enrichment. Importantly, our experimental design is ideal for exploring the neural underpinnings of this socially induced cognitive protection. Understanding how sociality influences cognition will be invaluable to translational models of aging, neuropsychiatric disease, and neurological injury.
摘要：
人类研究表明，健康的社会关系有利于认知，然而，对这种保护作用的潜在神经机制知之甚少。在啮齿动物中，关于急性隔离和环境富集（EE）的研究证实了社会暴露的重要性。尽管社会性的重要性得到了广泛认可，然而,啮齿动物模型尚未探索其他形式丰富的社会住房离婚的独立贡献。这项研究分离了从成年到老年的社会和身体丰富对空间学习和记忆的影响。将大鼠放置在单个或一组房屋中，只要有充足的财富，并在三个时间点对巴恩斯迷宫(BM)的几个阶段/版本进行了测试(标准，保留探针,变量位置,和逆转）。我们发现持续的社会住房增强了认知灵活性，任务集的优越获取(标准BM)证明了这一点，对新任务集的适应性(变量BM)，和改进的反转学习(反转BM)。空间记忆的长期保留（BM保留探针）不受住房条件的影响。我们实验室最近的研究，包括这份报告，是第一个表明社会住房赋予认知利益的人，而不仅仅是身体上的丰富。重要的是,我们的实验设计对于探索这种社会诱导的认知保护的神经基础是理想的。了解社会性如何影响认知将对衰老的转化模型非常宝贵，神经精神疾病,和神经损伤。
