Figure 1 | Translational Psychiatry

Figure 1

From: The oxytocin system promotes resilience to the effects of neonatal isolation on adult social attachment in female prairie voles

Figure 1

Experimental design. In Experiment (Expt) 1, entire litters were isolated from both parents and siblings in a temperature-controlled incubator for 3 h per day from PND1–14, with PND0 as the day of birth. Control litters were left undisturbed, apart from being weighed every 3 days. Anxiety-like behavior was tested in the open field (OF), social attachment in the partner preference test (PPT) after 24 and 48 h of cohabitation, and brains were harvested (BH) to perform autoradiography for OTR. Brains from a subset of females who were naive to behavioral testing also underwent autoradiography. In Expt 2, the impact of a 5min body and anogenital paint-brush tactile stimulation (TS) on hypothalamic oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP) neuronal activation was tested in PND6–7 pups. For 1 h before and after stimulation, pups were kept in a temperature-controlled incubator. In Expt 3, pups were isolated as in Expt 1, but given melanotan-II (MTII) or saline daily for the first week of life. OTR, oxytocin receptor; PND, postnatal day.

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