AUTHOR=Rivalan Marion , Alonso Lucille , Mosienko Valentina , Bey Patrik , Hyde Alexia , Bader Michael , Winter York , Alenina Natalia TITLE=Serotonin drives aggression and social behaviors of laboratory male mice in a semi-natural environment JOURNAL=Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience VOLUME=18 YEAR=2024 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1450540 DOI=10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1450540 ISSN=1662-5153 ABSTRACT=
Aggression is an adaptive social behavior crucial for the stability and prosperity of social groups. When uncontrolled, aggression leads to pathological violence that disrupts group structure and individual wellbeing. The comorbidity of uncontrolled aggression across different psychopathologies makes it a potential endophenotype of mental disorders with the same neurobiological substrates. Serotonin plays a critical role in regulating impulsive and aggressive behaviors. Mice lacking in brain serotonin, due to the ablation of tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2), the rate-limiting enzyme in serotonin synthesis, could serve as a potential model for studying pathological aggression. Home cage monitoring allows for the continuous observation and quantification of social and non-social behaviors in group-housed, freely-moving mice. Using an ethological approach, we investigated the impact of central serotonin ablation on the everyday expression of social and non-social behaviors and their correlations in undisturbed, group-living