Individual differences in affective processing and implications for animal welfare: a reaction norm approach

情感处理的个体差异及其对动物福利的影响：反应规范方法

• 批准号: BB/X014673/1
• 负责人: Michael Mendl
• 金额: $ 77.26万
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FX014673%2F1
• 关键词: Individual; differences; affective; processing; implications

Individuals differ in how they view the world. Some are more optimistic than others about the future or the outcome of ambiguous situations. Some are more sensitive to stimuli that are pleasant or rewarding. And some are more strongly affected by unpleasant things. These differences impact how individuals respond to opportunities or challenges in their lives with knock-on effects for their general wellbeing and vulnerability to affective (emotional) disorders such as depression. This is not just the case for people. In animals there is growing evidence that individuals vary in 'optimism' / 'pessimism' when deciding whether an ambiguous signal heralds a positive or negative outcome, and some evidence that these individual, or personality, characteristics predict how well they cope with challenge. The aim of this project is to comprehensively investigate these individual differences and their implications for animal welfare. We will use a cognitive task developed in our lab and designed to measure 'optimistic' or 'pessimistic' responding to ambiguous cues as a marker of, respectively, positive or negative affective states. This task has been used in more than 160 studies across a wide range of mammalian and bird species, and there is evidence of personality differences in 'optimism' that can influence an animal's vulnerability to stress. Furthermore, computational modelling of data from this task also allows us to derive measures of an individual's sensitivity to pleasant and unpleasant events.In this project, we will first quantify individual differences in the average expression of these characteristics (personality differences) in a widely used lab animal, the rat. We will also quantify how individuals differ in their stability of expression of the characteristics across repeated tests (variability or predictability), and in how flexible their responses are when tested across different contexts (plasticity). This will provide us with a more detailed picture than before of individual differences in 'optimism' and sensitivity to pleasant and unpleasant events.We will then evaluate how different types of individual respond to changes in the presence of opportunities or challenges in their home cage environments, for example by enriching their cages or introducing some unpredictable events. We will measure markers of their welfare and use the same analysis approach as above to establish each individual's average welfare across contexts and, in particular, the extent to which its welfare improves when in an opportunity-filled environment or becomes poorer in more challenging environments. We will thus be able to test, for example: whether more 'optimistic' individuals, especially those showing predictable rather than variable levels of 'optimism', cope better with challenge; whether individuals who are more sensitive to pleasant events benefit more from an increase in opportunities; whether individuals who show greater sensitivity to unpleasant events are more strongly affected by challenge. We will thus map links between individual characteristics and robustness or vulnerability in welfare-enhancing or welfare-challenging environments.We will then ask whether we can alter individuals' characteristics and improve robustness by exposing them to experience of play in complex environments with other animals. There is growing interest in the use of play as a practical way of improving welfare in lab animals, and we will systematically evaluate this possibility which, if supported, could inform animal management practices. Moreover, if play experience results in greater stability of individual responses in standard behavioural tests (e.g. of anxiety-like states, cognitive ability) despite changes to home environments, this will not only indicate that it acts to maintain welfare in the face of challenge, but also that it can enhance cross-context reproducibility of testing, an important goal in modern science.

每个人看待世界的方式都不同。有些人对未来或模棱两可的情况的结果比其他人更加乐观。有些人对令人愉快或有益的刺激更敏感。有些人更容易受到不愉快的事情的影响。这些差异影响着个人如何应对生活中的机遇或挑战，并对他们的整体健康和对抑郁等情感（情绪）疾病的脆弱性产生连锁反应。这不仅仅是人们的情况。在动物中，越来越多的证据表明，在决定模糊信号预示着积极还是消极结果时，个体的“乐观”/“悲观”程度有所不同，并且一些证据表明，这些个体或个性特征可以预测它们应对挑战的能力。该项目的目的是全面研究这些个体差异及其对动物福利的影响。我们将使用我们实验室开发的认知任务，旨在测量对模糊线索的“乐观”或“悲观”反应，分别作为积极或消极情感状态的标记。这项任务已在 160 多项针对多种哺乳动物和鸟类的研究中得到应用，并且有证据表明“乐观”方面的性格差异可能会影响动物对压力的脆弱性。此外，该任务数据的计算建模还使我们能够得出个体对愉快和不愉快事件的敏感度的度量。在这个项目中，我们将首先量化这些特征（个性差异）在广泛使用的平均表达中的个体差异。实验动物，老鼠。我们还将量化个体在重复测试中特征表达稳定性的差异（可变性或可预测性），以及在不同环境中测试时的反应灵活性（可塑性）。这将使我们比以前更详细地了解“乐观”以及对愉快和不愉快事件的敏感性方面的个体差异。然后，我们将评估不同类型的个体如何应对其家庭笼子环境中存在的机会或挑战的变化，例如丰富它们的笼子或引入一些不可预测的事件。我们将衡量他们的福利指标，并使用与上述相同的分析方法来确定每个人在不同背景下的平均福利，特别是在充满机会的环境中福利改善的程度或在更具挑战性的环境中变得更贫穷的程度。因此，我们将能够测试，例如：是否更“乐观”的个体，尤其是那些表现出可预测而不是可变的“乐观”水平的个体，是否能更好地应对挑战？对愉快事件更敏感的人是否会从机会的增加中受益更多？对不愉快事件表现出更高敏感性的个体是否更容易受到挑战的影响。因此，我们将在提高福利或挑战福利的环境中绘制个体特征与稳健性或脆弱性之间的联系。然后，我们将询问是否可以通过让个体在复杂环境中与其他动物一起玩耍来改变个体的特征并提高稳健性。人们越来越关注利用游戏作为改善实验动物福利的实用方法，我们将系统地评估这种可能性，如果得到支持，可以为动物管理实践提供信息。此外，如果尽管家庭环境发生了变化，但在标准行为测试（例如焦虑状态、认知能力）中，如果游戏体验导致个体反应更加稳定，这不仅表明它在面对挑战时可以维持福利，而且它还可以增强测试的跨环境再现性，这是现代科学的一个重要目标。