CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The three-chamber test and the reciprocal social interactions test are the most widely used paradigms to study sociability in rodents. However, they were not initially developed for simultaneous electrochemical recordings. In the former, the apparatus is not well suited for handling moving wires and it only allows the simultaneous presentation of two stimuli as a maximum, while in the latter the aggressive behaviors initiated by the conspecific are not restricted. This work aims to validate a social interaction test compatible with fast-scan cyclic voltammetry and that allows the free circulation of implanted mice and the presentation of multiple stimuli of different novelty, salience and valence. In the interaction phase, subject mice spent more time exploring an age and sex-matched conspecific than an object. In addition, they preferred to investigate a novel demonstrator over a familiar one in the recognition phase. The number of entries to the exploration zones was also significantly different in both phases. Discrimination indexes remained stable in a retest conducted one week later, although differences within each phase were less significant. Other variables such as latency to first visit and length of the first visit were particularly relevant when the affective state of the demonstrators was modified. Validating this test is the first step towards studying the dopaminergic contribution to social interaction and the social phenotype of a murine model of schizophrenia.