Stress responsiveness and anxiety-like behavior: The early social environment differentially shapes stability over time in a small rodent.
Horm Behav
; 90: 90-97, 2017 04.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-28263764
ABSTRACT
The early social environment can profoundly affect behavioral and physiological phenotypes. We investigated how male wild cavy offspring, whose mothers had either lived in a stable (SE) or an unstable social environment (UE) during pregnancy and lactation, differed in their anxiety-like behavior and stress responsiveness. At two different time points in life, we tested the offspring's anxiety-like behavior in a dark-light test and their endocrine reaction to challenge in a cortisol reactivity test. Furthermore, we analyzed whether individual traits remained stable over time. There was no effect of the early social environment on anxiety-like behavior and stress responsiveness. However, at an individual level, anxiety-like behavior was stable over time in UE- but not in SE-sons. Stress responsiveness, in turn, was rather inconsistent in UE-sons and temporally stable in SE-sons. Conclusively, we showed for the first time that the early social environment differentially shapes the stability of behavioral and endocrine traits. At first glance, these results may be surprising, but they can be explained by the different functions anxiety-like behavior and stress responsiveness have.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Ansiedad
/
Medio Social
/
Estrés Psicológico
/
Conducta Animal
/
Adaptación Psicológica
Tipo de estudio:
Etiology_studies
Aspecto:
Determinantes_sociais_saude
Límite:
Animals
/
Pregnancy
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Horm Behav
Año:
2017
Tipo del documento:
Article