Poster abstracts
Poster number 95 submitted by Shakeera Walker
Characterizing sex-specific central and peripheral immune function following paternal deprivation in vigilant-avoidant adult California mice (Peromyscus californicus)
Shakeera L. Walker (Neuroscience Graduate Program), Dr. Erica Glasper (Department of Neuroscience, Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research)
Abstract:
The 2020 U.S. Census Bureau reports ~21% of children grow up in fatherless single-parent homes. Father absence can increase externalizing behaviors (e.g., social anxiety) in children later in life. Individuals with social anxiety disorder use passive stress-coping mechanisms, like attending to a stressful social stimulus and then avoiding it, as a way to reinforce social anxiety symptoms. Our lab recently reported that paternal deprivation, in the biparental California mouse (Peromyscus californicus), increases adult social vigilance behavior (i.e., head oriented toward a social stimulus while outside the interaction zone) while avoiding a novel same-sex conspecific. This vigilant-avoidant behavior was accompanied by reduced hippocampal interleukin (IL)-6 and increased hypothalamic IL-1β in paternally deprived males but not females. The hippocampus and hypothalamus mediate social cognition and stress-related behaviors in rodents, and alterations in proinflammatory cytokine signaling can impair prosocial behaviors. The extent to which inflammatory mechanisms mediate social behaviors in adult paternally-deprived offspring is unknown. To investigate this, we will use the California mouse to model the effects of paternal neglect and test the hypothesis that father absence induces sex-specific impairments in inflammatory processes that may underlie vigilant-avoidant behavior in adulthood. California mice will be biparentally-reared or paternally deprived, and social behaviors will be evaluated in adulthood. Following behavioral testing, we will collect brain tissues associated with social behavior (e.g., hippocampus, hypothalamus, amygdala, nucleus accumbens) for inflammatory marker gene expression or morphological analyses of microglia, the brains resident immune cell. Peripheral tissues (e.g., bone marrow, spleen, blood) will also be collected for analysis of leukocytes.
Keywords: Paternal deprivation, Social vigilance, immune function