1. LMT USV Toolbox, a Novel Methodological Approach to Place Mouse Ultrasonic Vocalizations in Their Behavioral Contexts—A Study in Female and Male C57BL/6J Mice and in Shank3 Mutant Females
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De Chaumont, Fabrice, Lemière, Nathalie, Coqueran, Sabrina, Bourgeron, Thomas, Ey, Elodie, Génétique humaine et fonctions cognitives - Human Genetics and Cognitive Functions (GHFC (UMR_3571 / U-Pasteur_1)), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut Pasteur [Paris]-Université de Paris (UP), This work was partially funded by the Institut Pasteur, the Bettencourt-Schueller Foundation, the Cognacq-Jay Foundation, the Conny-Maeva Foundation, the ERANET-NEURON ALTRUISM program, the Agence Nationale de la Recherche through grant number ANR-10-LABX-62-IBEID, France-BioImaging infrastructure through grant number ANR-10-INBS-04 and the INCEPTION program through grant number ANR-16-CONV-0005, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the University Paris Diderot, the BioPsy Labex, and the Foundation for Medical Research (Equipe DEQ20130326488). This study also benefited from the financial support of GIS 'Autisme et Troubles du Neuro-Développement'., ANR-10-LABX-0062,IBEID,Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases(2010), ANR-10-INBS-0004,France-BioImaging,Développment d'une infrastructure française distribuée coordonnée(2010), ANR-16-CONV-0005,INCEPTION,Institut Convergences pour l'étude de l'Emergence des Pathologies au Travers des Individus et des populatiONs(2016), and Institut Pasteur [Paris] (IP)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Paris Cité (UPCité)
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mouse model ,[SDV.BA]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Animal biology ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,autism ,Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry ,Behavioral Neuroscience ,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology ,age ,Shank3 ,sex ,social behavior analysis ,mouse ,RC321-571 ,ultrasonic vocalization (USV) - Abstract
International audience; Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are used as a phenotypic marker in mouse models of neuropsychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, current methodologies still require time-consuming manual input or sound recordings clean of any background noise. We developed a method to overcome these two restraints to boost knowledge on mouse USVs. The methods are freely available and the USV analysis runs online at https://usv.pasteur.cloud . As little is currently known about usage and structure of ultrasonic vocalizations during social interactions over the long-term and in unconstrained context, we investigated mouse spontaneous communication by coupling the analysis of USVs with automatic labeling of behaviors. We continuously recorded during 3 days undisturbed interactions of same-sex pairs of C57BL/6J sexually naive males and females at 5 weeks and 3 and 7 months of age. In same-sex interactions, we observed robust differences between males and females in the amount of USVs produced, in the acoustic structure and in the contexts of emission. The context-specific acoustic variations emerged with increasing age. The emission of USVs also reflected a high level of excitement during social interactions. We finally highlighted the importance of studying long-term spontaneous communication by investigating female mice lacking Shank3 , a synaptic protein associated with autism. While the previous short-time constrained investigations could not detect USV emission abnormalities, our analysis revealed robust differences in the usage and structure of the USVs emitted by mutant mice compared to wild-type female pairs.
- Published
- 2021
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