Context and Individual Characteristics Modulate the Association between Oxytocin Receptor Gene Polymorphism and Social Behavior in Border Collies.

ABSTRACT: Recent studies suggest that the relationship between endogenous oxytocin and social affiliative behavior can be critically moderated by contextual and individual factors in humans. While oxytocin has been shown to influence human-directed affiliative behaviors in dogs, no study investigated yet how such factors moderate these effects. Our study aimed to investigate whether the context and the dogs' individual characteristics moderate the associations between the social affiliative (greeting) behavior and four single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene. We recorded the greeting behavior in three contexts: (1) when the dog first met an unfamiliar experimenter, (2) during a separation from the owner, and (3) after the experimenter approached the dog in

SUBMITTER: Turcsan B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5742244 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature