Adolescent Social Isolation Induces Persistent Impairments in Emotional Discrimination and Helping Behavior.
Overview
- Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064
- Department of Biological Sciences, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015
Abstract
Prosocial behaviors, helpful actions directed toward the well-being of others, are an essential component of social behavior. Adolescence is a particularly sensitive period for the development of social behaviors, yet how social experience during this window shapes prosocial behavior remains poorly understood. Here, we used behavioral assays to examine how social isolation at different ages affects emotional discrimination and affiliative helping behavior in mice of both sexes. We found that adult mice raised in social isolation since weaning failed to allogroom distressed conspecifics and were unable to distinguish stressed from unstressed mice in an emotional discrimination assay. Remarkably, 2 weeks of post-weaning social isolation was already sufficient to impair both emotional discrimination and prosocial allogrooming, and these deficits persisted despite 2 months of resocialization. In contrast, 2 weeks of adult social isolation spared emotional discrimination but impaired allogrooming toward stressed conspecifics. These findings reveal a dissociation between emotional discrimination and prosocial helping behavior. Overall, this work identifies adolescence as a sensitive period for the development of emotional state recognition and provides a behavioral framework for investigating how early social experience sculpts neural circuits underlying empathy and stress buffering.
Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.
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Data
Datasets cited
- doi:10.5061/
dryad.2rbnzs858 , at Dryad; found in DataCite
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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record
Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 3 authors, 5 keywords, 12 MeSH terms, 2 funders, 45 references.
Cite
This paper
Lee, H. G., Lu, J., & Zuo, Y. (2026). Adolescent Social Isolation Induces Persistent Impairments in Emotional Discrimination and Helping Behavior. eNeuro, 13(7), ENEURO.0441-25.2026. https://
BibTeX
@article{lee2026adolesce
author = {Lee, Hyo Gun and Lu, Ju and Zuo, Yi},
title = {{Adolescent Social Isolation Induces Persistent Impairments in Emotional Discrimination and Helping Behavior}},
journal = {eNeuro},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
volume = {13},
number = {7},
pages = {ENEURO.0441--25.2026},
publisher = {Society for Neuroscience},
issn = {2373-2822},
doi = {10.1523/
url = {https://
pmid = {42373547},
pmcid = {PMC13362189}
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
AU - Lee, Hyo Gun
AU - Lu, Ju
AU - Zuo, Yi
TI - Adolescent Social Isolation Induces Persistent Impairments in Emotional Discrimination and Helping Behavior
T2 - eNeuro
J2 - eNeuro
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/
VL - 13
IS - 7
SP - ENEURO.0441
EP - 25.2026
SN - 2373-2822
PB - Society for Neuroscience
DO - 10.1523/
UR - https://
LA - en
ER -
CSL-JSON
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