The social modulation of behaviour, cognition and stress reactivity during pregnancy and lactation

怀孕和哺乳期行为、认知和应激反应的社会调节

基本信息

批准号：
135025558
负责人：
Professorin Dr. Sylvia Kaiser
金额：
--
依托单位：
Abteilung für Verhaltensbiologie
依托单位国家：
德国
项目类别：
Research Units
财政年份：
2009
资助国家：
德国
起止时间：
2008-12-31 至 2015-12-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/135025558?language=en
关键词：
social modulation behaviour cognition stress

项目摘要

In mammals a very important phase, in which environmental factors can shape brain development, physiology, and behaviour is the prenatal phase. The social environment during pregnancy can be crucial for the development of the offspring. For example, social instability during pregnancy generally brings about a behavioural and neuroendocrine masculinization in daughters and a less pronounced expression of male-typical traits in sons. Furthermore, impaired cognitive abilities and changed emotional behaviour and stress reactivity due to prenatal factors are described. The changed behavioural traits, emotional behaviour, and cognitive abilities due to prenatal social factors are often regarded as deviation from the norm or even as pathological. Nonetheless, the variation in behavioural phenotype brought about by prenatal factors can represent an adaptation to the prevailing and/or future environmental situation. However, empirical data to answer these questions are sparse. We could demonstrate in wild cavies that offspring of mothers, who had lived in a stable or an unstable social environment during pregnancy and lactation, developed different behavioural profiles. Thus, the aim of this project is to investigate in wild cavies the adaptive significance of these different behavioural traits. For this purpose we will mimic in enclosures situations, which are known to occur in nature, and in which these specific behavioural strategies should have advantages: We will investigate in match-mismatch-experiments, whether in situation A the behavioural strategy A (a strategy, which will be developed by offspring, whose mothers had lived in a similar situation during pregnancy and lactation) will have advantages over strategy B (a strategy, which will be developed by offspring, whose mothers had lived in a different situation B during pregnancy and lactation), and vice versa. Additionally, we will investigate whether these different behavioural traits are correlated with different emotional behaviour, cognitive abilities and stress reactivity. From this project we expect completely new insights into the adaptiveness of behavioural strategies and their correlation with emotionality and cognitive abilities shaped by different social environments during early phases of life.

对于哺乳动物来说，环境因素可以塑造大脑发育、生理和行为的一个非常重要的阶段是产前阶段。怀孕期间的社会环境对于后代的发育至关重要。例如，怀孕期间的社会不稳定通常会导致女儿的行为和神经内分泌男性化，而儿子的男性典型特征表现不那么明显。此外，还描述了由于产前因素导致的认知能力受损以及情绪行为和应激反应的改变。由于产前社会因素导致的行为特征、情绪行为和认知能力的改变常常被认为是偏离正常甚至是病态的。尽管如此，产前因素带来的行为表型的变化可以代表对当前和/或未来环境状况的适应。然而，回答这些问题的经验数据很少。我们可以在野生豚鼠身上证明，在怀孕和哺乳期间生活在稳定或不稳定的社会环境中的母亲的后代会发展出不同的行为特征。因此，该项目的目的是研究野生豚鼠这些不同行为特征的适应性意义。为此，我们将在封闭环境中进行模拟，这些情况已知在自然界中发生，并且这些特定的行为策略应该具有优势：我们将在匹配-不匹配-实验中进行调查，在情况 A 中，行为策略 A（一种策略，该策略将由其母亲在怀孕和哺乳期间生活在相似情况下的后代制定）将比策略 B（该策略将由其母亲在怀孕和哺乳期间生活在不同情况 B 的后代制定）具有优势哺乳期），反之亦然。此外，我们将研究这些不同的行为特征是否与不同的情绪行为、认知能力和压力反应相关。从这个项目中，我们期望对行为策略的适应性及其与生命早期阶段不同社会环境所塑造的情绪和认知能力的相关性有全新的见解。