To Play or Not to Play? Effects of Playmate Familiarity and Social Isolation on Social Play Engagement in Three Laboratory Rat Strains.

ABSTRACT: Social play is a motivating and rewarding behavior displayed by juveniles of many mammalian species, including humans and rats. Social play is vital to the development of social skills. Autistic children show less social play engagement which may contribute to their impairments in social skills. There is limited knowledge about what external conditions may positively or negatively influence social play engagement in humans or other animals. Therefore, we determined how two common external conditions, playmate familiarity and social isolation, modulate social play levels and social play defense tactics in juveniles of three common laboratory rat strains: Long-Evans, Sprague-Dawley, and Wistar. Males and females were socially isolated for either 2h or 48h prior to social play testing and wer

SUBMITTER: Orsucci IC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11601367 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature