Long-lasting housing environment manipulation and acute loss of environmental enrichment impact BALB/c mice behaviour in multiple functional domains.
Momoe SukegawaToru YoshiharaShengqun HouMasahide AsanoAnthony J HannanDan Ohtan WangPublished in: The European journal of neuroscience (2022)
Understanding environmental influences on individuals' behaviour is challenging. Here we have investigated the housing impact of 9 weeks of enriched environment (EE) and social isolation (SI) and the impact of abrupt deprivation of EE (enrichment removal: ER) on BALB/c mice. Compared with the widely used C57BL/6 strain in research, BALB/c synthesises serotonin less efficiently due to a genetic variation and thus may potentially represent human populations at higher risk of stress-related disorders. We assessed the effects of EE and SI by conducting a behavioural test battery and the effects of acute ER by monitoring homecage activities and social behaviour. We found that EE and SI impact BALB/c's physiological states and behavioural performances from lower to higher cognitive processes: increased body weight, increased rectal temperature, altered performance in motor and sensory tasks, the activity level in a novel environment and altered performance in tests of anxiety-like behaviour, stress-coping strategies and learning and memory. Furthermore, acute ER triggered stress/frustration-like behaviour in BALB/c, with increased aggression, increased social distancing and disrupted daily/nightly activities. Our results demonstrate that long-lasting housing manipulation such as EE and SI, impact behaviour via multilayered processes over a wide range of functional domains, and unforeseen change to a negative environment, ER, is a major stressor that causes behavioural and psychological consequences through environment-gene interactions, a model of direct relevance to human health.
Keyphrases
- human health
- liver failure
- respiratory failure
- body weight
- healthcare
- mental health
- estrogen receptor
- room temperature
- endoplasmic reticulum
- mental illness
- breast cancer cells
- aortic dissection
- drug induced
- endothelial cells
- climate change
- high fat diet induced
- type diabetes
- mass spectrometry
- rectal cancer
- gene expression
- working memory
- resting state
- acute respiratory distress syndrome
- life cycle
- patient reported
- genome wide identification