Novel competition test for food rewards reveals stable dominance status in adult male rats.

ABSTRACT: Social hierarchy is a potent modulator of behavior, that is typically established through overt agonistic interactions between individuals in the group. Once established, social ranks are maintained through subtler interactions allowing the redirection of energy away from agonistic interactions towards other needs. The available tasks for assessing social rank in rats allow the study of the mechanisms by which social hierarches are formed in early phases but fail to assess the maintenance of established hierarchies between stable pairs of animals, which might rely on distinct neurobiological mechanisms. Here we present and validate a novel trial-based dominancy assay, the modified Food Competition test, where established social hierarchies can be identified in the home cage of non-food dep

SUBMITTER: Costa DF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8285491 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature