Confirming Measures of Social Motivation in Background Strains of Mice Using the Weighted Doors Task

Abstract

The weighted doors task is a novel measure of social motivation and is used in the current study to determine the differences in social motivation between C57 and BTBR mice as well as sex differences. It was found that male mice displayed higher social motivation in comparison to the female mice and the C57 mice displayed higher social motivation than the BTBR mice. The social deficits the BTBR mice displayed support their continued use as an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) mouse model. Additionally, this research validated the weighted doors task as a robust and reliable measure of social motivation, allowing future neuroscience research to utilize the weighted doors task as a standardized measure of social motivation. In this way, conditions such as ASD can be investigated and better understood for future interventions.