Fig. 1: WT mice show avoidance and aversive facial expressions to object touch, but not social touch. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: WT mice show avoidance and aversive facial expressions to object touch, but not social touch.

From: A reduced ability to discriminate social from non-social touch at the circuit level may underlie social avoidance in autism

Fig. 1

a Cartoon of behavioral assay for social facial touch. b Timeline of social touch behavioral assay. Mice receive 40 bouts of voluntary object and voluntary social touch, 60 min apart, on Day #1. On Day #2, mice receive 40 bouts of forced object and forced social touch. For each bout, the platform is moving for 5 s and is stopped for 5 s. Created in BioRender. Lim, K. (2025) https://BioRender.com/ppucaq3. c Avoidance running and different aversive facial expressions (orbital tightening and aversive whisker protraction) are quantified using FaceMap and DeepLabCut. d Running avoidance during the first 5 presentations of touch in WT mice (left). Number of bouts of prolonged whisker protraction (middle) and orbital tightening (right) across all 40 bouts of touch in WT mice. N = 9 mice; Squares = males, circles = females. **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05, two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s. e The motion of DeepLabCut (DLC) labels corresponding to different facial features was used to decode touch context (social vs. object) and touch choice (voluntary vs. forced) with SVM classifiers. f Decoder performance of touch context (social vs. object) using DLC labels on the face in WT mice across time (from 1 s before to 2 s after the platform stops) for voluntary touch. g Decoder accuracy for context discrimination for using DLC labels for all facial features or labels for individual facial features (whiskers, eye, pupil, nose, or mouth) during the time after platform movement (−0.5 s to +2 s) for voluntary touch. p < 0.01 for the non-parametric Kruskal–Wallis test. h Decoder accuracy for context discrimination using all DLC labels before (−1.5 to −0.5 s) and after (−0.5 to +0.5 s) platform movement for voluntary touch. *p < 0.05, parametric paired two-tailed t-test for (h, i, k, m, n). i Decoder accuracy for context discrimination using all DLC labels for voluntary touch and forced touch. *p < 0.05. j Decoder performance for context discrimination using only DLC whisker labels in WT mice differs across time for voluntary and forced touch (from −1 to +2 s). k Decoder accuracy for context discrimination using DLC whisker labels before (−1.5 to −0.5 s) and after (−0.5 to +0.5 s) platform movement for voluntary touch. *p < 0.05. l Decoder performance of touch choice (voluntary vs. forced) using all DLC labels on the mouse’s face in WT mice across time for social and object touch (from −1 to +2 s). m Decoder accuracy for choice discrimination using all DLC labels before (−1.5 to −0.5 s) and after (−0.5 to +0.5 s) platform movement for social touch. **p < 0.01. n Decoder accuracy for choice discrimination using all DLC labels during the first second for social vs. object touch. N = 8 mice for (f–n). All data are presented as mean ± SEM.

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