Fig. 5: Fmr1 KO mice show similar aversion to social and object touch and find social interactions within their personal space, particularly aversive.

a Running avoidance during the first 5 presentations of touch in Fmr1 KO mice (n = 10) for social touch and object touch. b Number of bouts of prolonged whisker protraction (left) and orbital tightening (right) in Fmr1 KO mice across all 40 presentations of social or object touch in Fmr1 KO mice. Squares = males, circles = females. **p < 0.01 for two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s. c Left: Cartoon of how test mice might perceive touch choice (voluntary vs. forced touch). Created in BioRender. Lim, K. (2025) https://BioRender.com/ppucaq3. Right: number of bouts of AFEs (aversive whisker protraction and orbital tightening) for Fmr1 KO and WT mice during voluntary vs. forced social touch. **p < 0.01 and *p < 0.05 for two-way ANOVA with Bonferroni’s. d Left: Decoder performance for touch context (social vs. object) using all DLC labels on the mouse’s face in Fmr1 KO and WT mice across time (−1 to +2 s after platform stops). Right: Decoder accuracy for touch context before (−1.5 to −0.5 s) and after (−0.5 to +0.5 s) in Fmr1 KO mice. Squares = males, circles = females. *p < 0.01 for unpaired parametric two-tailed t-test. e Change in decoder accuracy (% after minus % before) for touch context using all DLC whisker labels in Fmr1 KO and WT. Squares = males, circles = females. *p < 0.05 for unpaired parametric t-test. f Avoidance running, saccades, and AFEs were used to decode touch context with SVM classifiers. g Left: Decoder accuracy for touch context based on aversive behaviors in WT and Fmr1 KO mice (from −1 s to +2 s after platform stops). Right: Mean decoder accuracy (−0.5 to +2 s) for individual mice. Squares = males, circles = females. *p < 0.01 for unpaired parametric two-tailed t-test. Data presented as mean ± SEM. N = 9 WT and 10 Fmr1 KO mice for (a–c). N = 8 WT and 10 Fmr1 KO mice for (d, e, g).