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Operant social seeking to a novel peer after social isolation is associated with activation of nucleus accumbens shell in rats

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Abstract

Rationale and Objective

Deprivation of social interaction promotes social reward seeking in rodents, assessed primarily by the conditioned place preference procedure. Here, we used an operant social procedure in rats and examined the effect of the housing condition (pair-housing vs. single-housing) during or after social self-administration on social reward seeking.

Methods

We first trained paired-housed or single-housed rats to gain access to an age- and sex-matched novel peer. On post-training day 1 (PTD1), we tested both groups for social seeking without the presence of the novel peer. Next, we divided each group into pair-housing or single-housing conditions and tested all four groups (pair-pair, pair-single, single-pair, and single-single) for social seeking on post-training day 12 (PTD12). Finally, we analyzed Fos expression in the striatum associated with social seeking on PTD12.

Result

Single-housed rats earned more social rewards during social self-administration than pair-housed rats. Social isolation during social self-administration also promoted social seeking on PTD1 and PTD12, regardless of their housing conditions after social self-administration training. Additionally, in pair-housed rats, social isolation during the post-training period led to a time-dependent increase of social seeking on PTD12 compared with PTD1. Finally, the Fos analyses revealed an increase of Fos expression in NAc shell of single-single rats after social seeking test on PTD12 compared with pair-pair rats.

Conclusion

Our data suggest that social isolation promotes operant social self-administration and social seeking. In addition, neuronal activation of NAc shell is associated with social seeking after social isolation.

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Data Availability

Due to privacy and ethical concerns, neither the data nor the source of the data can be made available.

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Acknowledgements

XL conceived the project, provided intellectual inputs, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. A.O and KTG carried out the experiments and analyzed the data. HL and MAMB carried out the experiment. MV provided intellectual input and wrote the paper. The research was supported by departmental startup funds (XL) and a grant from NIDA [DA047976] (MV) and BBRF Young Investigator Grant Award [28897] (MV).

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Author notes

  1. Adedayo Olaniran and Kristine T. Garcia contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Maryland College Park, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Adedayo Olaniran, Kristine T. Garcia, Megan A. M. Burke, Hongyu Lin & Xuan Li

  2. Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA

    Marco Venniro

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  1. Adedayo Olaniran
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Correspondence to Marco Venniro or Xuan Li.

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This article belongs to a Special Issue on Spanning the spectrum of social behavior: towards more translationally relevant animal models.

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Olaniran, A., Garcia, K.T., Burke, M.A.M. et al. Operant social seeking to a novel peer after social isolation is associated with activation of nucleus accumbens shell in rats. Psychopharmacology (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-022-06280-9

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