PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Prolonged or chronic social isolation has pronounced effects on animals, ranging from altered stress responses, increased anxiety and aggressive behaviour, and even increased mortality. The effects of shorter periods of isolation are much less well researched; however, short periods of isolation are used routinely for testing animal behaviour and physiology. Here, we studied how a 3 h period of isolation from a cagemate affected neural gene expression in three brain regions that contain important components of the social decision-making network, the hypothalamus, the nucleus taeniae of the amygdala, and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, using a gregarious bird as a model (zebra finches). We found evidence suggestive of altered neural activity, synaptic transmission, metabolism, and even potentially pain perception, all of which could create cofounding effects on experimental tests that involve isolating animals. We recommend that the effects of short-term social isolation need to be better understood and propose alternatives to isolating animals for testing.
摘要：
长期或长期的社会隔离对动物有明显的影响，从改变的应激反应，焦虑和攻击行为增加，甚至增加了死亡率。较短的隔离时间的影响研究要少得多；然而，短期隔离通常用于测试动物行为和生理学。这里,我们研究了一个3小时的分离期间从一个笼状影响三个大脑区域，包含社会决策网络的重要组成部分的神经基因表达，下丘脑,杏仁核的taeniae,和终末纹的床核，使用群居鸟类作为模型（斑马雀）。我们发现了神经活动改变的证据，突触传递,新陈代谢，甚至潜在的疼痛感知，所有这些都可能对涉及隔离动物的实验测试产生共同影响。我们建议需要更好地理解短期社会隔离的影响，并提出隔离动物进行测试的替代方法。
