The goal of the study was to provide evidence that the production of 50-kHz calls by adult rats is driven by potential or direct social contacts. The calls have been studied during daily visits to a cage by single or paired rats. Repeated exposure of rats to the cage frequently visited by other rats or direct contact between rats significantly increased the number of 50-kHz calls. The increase in production of 50-kHz calls was reduced by 78% after intrapreoptic-anterior hypothalamic injection of MK-801, an N-methyl-D-aspartate-type glutamate receptor antagonist. Calls emitted in all situations had a similar acoustic profile. It was found that 50-kHz calls were produced in anticipation of, and/or during, direct social contacts among adult rats and were predominantly initiated by olfactory stimuli. The calls seem to express an appetitive behavioral state in which the central glutamatergic mechanism is implicated.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0735-7036.116.1.73 | DOI Listing |
Acta Neuropsychiatr
January 2025
Translational Neuropsychiatry Unit, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Objective: Ultrasonic vocalisations (USVs) emitted by rats may reflect affective states. Specifically, 50 kHz calls emitted during juvenile playing are associated with positive affect. Given that depression is characterised by profound alterations in this domain, we proposed that USV calls may configure a suitable tool for assessing depressive-like states.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPain Rep
February 2025
Institute for Biomedical Sciences of Pain, Tangdu Hospital, The Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, P. R. China.
Objectives: This study is to assess how 22 kHz and 50 kHz spontaneous ultrasound vocalization (USV) calls would be affected by different origins of pain so as to validate the use of USV in pain studies.
Methods: Five well-established rat models of pain were used to evaluate various parameters of spontaneous 22 kHz and 50 kHz calls in adult male rats in terms of both acute and chronic or inflammatory and neuropathic or somatic and visceral origins. The effects of local lidocaine blockade of the injection site and intraperitoneal administration of antidepressant (amitriptyline) and anticonvulsant (gabapentin) were examined as well in typical inflammatory and neuropathic pain models, respectively.
Elife
December 2024
Behavior and Metabolism Research Laboratory, Mossakowski Medical Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
Rats are believed to communicate their emotional state by emitting two distinct types of ultrasonic vocalizations. The first is long '22-kHz' vocalizations (>300 ms, <32-kHz) with constant frequency, signaling aversive states, and the second is short '50-kHz' calls (<150 ms, >32 kHz), often frequency-modulated, in appetitive situations. Here, we describe aversive vocalizations emitted at a higher pitch by male Wistar and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) in an intensified aversive state - prolonged fear conditioning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS One
November 2024
Behavioral Neuroscience and Drug Development, Maj Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland.
The rapid decrease of light intensity is a potent stimulus of rats' activity. The nature of this activity, including the character of social behavior and the composition of concomitant ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs), is unknown. Using deep learning algorithms, this study aimed to examine the social life of rat pairs kept in semi-natural conditions and observed during the transitions between light and dark, as well as between dark and light periods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBehav Processes
November 2024
Division of Brain and Neurophysiology, Department of Physiology, Jichi Medical University, 3311-1 Yakushiji, Shimotsuke, Japan.
Rodent ultrasonic vocalisations can be used to assess social behaviour and have attracted increasing attention. Rats emit 50-kHz and 22-kHz calls during appetitive and aversive states, respectively. These calls induce behavioural and neural responses in the receiver by transmitting the internal states of the rats, thus serving communicative functions.
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