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Meanings of self-grooming depend on an inverted U-shaped function with aversiveness

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 17, page 591 (2016)Cite this article

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The relationship between rodent self-grooming and stress and anxiety-like behaviour, and the regulation of such grooming by several emotion-linked brain areas, such as the amygdala–bed nucleus of the stria terminalis–hypothalamus circuit, are among the issues discussed by Kalueff et al. in their recent, excellent Review (Neurobiology of rodent self-grooming and its value for translational neuroscience. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 17, 45–59 (2016))1.

A point that is not addressed in the Review is, however, the fact that the dynamics and even the qualitative meaning of anxiety-related self-grooming may change completely as a function of context and/or the dynamics of coping responses. In support of this assertion, first, different degrees of aversiveness lead to specific effects on rodent self-grooming. In the absence of aversiveness (for example, before consummatory responses2 or in a familiar environment3) or under slightly aversive conditions4, low self-grooming levels are observed. Increasing self-grooming levels are elicited by novel environments (for example, an open field or an elevated plus maze4), by habituation to novel environments (for example, to an elevated plus maze5,6 or an open field3) and by pre-exposure to anxiogenic or stressing conditions (for example, after confinement to an open arm5 or after restraint6). High aversiveness leads to low or very low self-grooming levels, as observed when animals are exposed to environmental light and noise7 or during avoidance learning in a shuttle-box task with prior exposure to electric footshocks3.

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Figure 1: Inverted U-shaped function representing the relationship between rodent self-grooming levels and aversiveness of the situation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are supported by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad and Generalitat de Catalunya (grants PSI2013-41872-P and 2014SGR-1587 to A.F.-T.), Fundação Araucária (prot. 38.134 to C.E.) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (proc. 471214/2014-0 to C.E.).

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  1. Department of Psychiatry & Forensic Medicine, Institute of Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain

    Alberto Fernández-Teruel

  2. Departamento de Psicologia Geral e Análise do Comportamento, Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Estadual de Londrina, PR445, Km 380, Londrina, 86051–990, Paraná, Brazil

    Celio Estanislau

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Correspondence to Alberto Fernández-Teruel.

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Fernández-Teruel, A., Estanislau, C. Meanings of self-grooming depend on an inverted U-shaped function with aversiveness. Nat Rev Neurosci 17, 591 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn.2016.102

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