Social dominance mediates behavioral adaptation to chronic stress in a sex-specific manner
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Germany
- Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Abstract
Sex differences and social context independently contribute to the development of stress-related disorders. However, less is known about how their interplay might influence behavior and physiology. Here we focused on social hierarchy status, a major component of the social environment in mice, and whether it influences the behavioral adaptation to chronic stress in a sex-specific manner. We used a high-throughput automated behavioral monitoring system to assess social dominance in same-sex group-living mice. We found that position in the social hierarchy at baseline was a significant predictor of multiple behavioral outcomes following exposure to chronic stress. Crucially, this association carried opposite consequences for the two sexes. This work demonstrates the importance of recognizing the interplay between sex and social factors and enhances our understating of how individual differences shape the stress response.
Data availability
All data used to support the findings of this work and the code used in performing the analyses and producing the figures for this manuscript is freely accessible in a GitHub repository:https://stoyokaramihalev.github.io/CMS_Dominance/The MATLAB-based mouse tracking system is available from the corresponding author upon request.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
H2020 European Research Council (260463)
- Alon Chen
Israel Science Foundation (1565/15 and 1916/12)
- Alon Chen
Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (01KU1501A)
- Alon Chen
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (Open-access funding)
- Alon Chen
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All experiments were approved by and conducted in accordance with the regulations of the local Animal Care and Use Committee (Government of Upper Bavaria, Munich, Germany), under licenses Az.: 55.2-1-54-2532-148-2012, Az.:55.2-1-54-2532-32-2016 and ROB-55.2-2532.Vet_02-18-50.
Copyright
© 2020, Karamihalev et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Social dominance mediates behavioral adaptation to chronic stress in a sex-specific manner
eLife 9:e58723.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.58723
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