The laboratory setting is a sparse environment compared to the complexity of nature, both physically and socially. Some research aims to quantify social behavior in complex housing areas such as enriched caging with social selleck kinase inhibitor groups (e.g., artificial, visible burrow systems (Blanchard et al., 2001 and Seney et al., 2006), and large, semi-natural enclosures (e.g. King, 1956, Dewsbury, 1984, Ophir et al., 2012 and Margerum, 2013). Other research relies on constrained social interactions in tests designed to measure a few particular aspects of social behavior (Crawley, 2007).

For example social interaction tests typically measure the amount of time spent in social contact or investigation with a conspecific. Social choice tests take place in multi-chambered apparatuses that allow investigation of either a conspecific or a non-living stimulus such as a novel object or empty restrainer ( Moy et al., 2007). Variations on this test involve a choice of a familiar versus unfamiliar individual, such as in the partner preference test ( Williams et al., 1992). Social habituation/dishabituation tests are often used to assess social recognition and memory for familiar individuals ( Ferguson et al., 2002; Choleris et al., 2003). Social motivation may be assessed by measures of effort expended to access another individual ( Lee et al., 1999), or by conditioned place preference for a social environment ( Panksepp and Lahvis, 2007).

Other tests measure specific aspects of social competency, such as memory and social inferences involved in hierarchy ( Cordero and Sandi, 2007 and Grosenick et al., Cell press 2007). Recent studies of GW786034 order pro-social behavior in rats have focused on latency to free a restrained rat under different scenarios ( Ben-Ami Bartal et al., 2011 and Ben-Ami Bartal et al., 2014). There is no peripheral hormonal indicator of sociability, but two neuropeptides have been highly implicated in many aspects of mammalian social behavior: oxytocin (OT) and arginine vasopressin (VP). Oxytocin is produced in the hypothalamus and facilitates a wide variety of processes related to social behavior, including maternal behavior, trust,

anxiolysis, and sexual pair-bond formation (reviewed in Ross and Young, 2009, Young et al., 2008, Neumann, 2008, Zucker et al., 1968, Carter et al., 2008, Donaldson and Young, 2008 and Anacker and Beery, 2013). Vasopressin activity has been associated with aggression, anxiety, and social behavior (reviewed in Kelly and Goodson, 2014), as well partner preference formation in male prairie voles (Cho et al., 1999 and Young and Wang, 2004). The locations and densities of oxytocin receptors (OTR) and vasopressin type 1a receptors (V1aR) have been associated with species variations, as well as with individual variations in social behavior from affiliation to aggression (e.g. Everts et al., 1997, Young, 1999, Beery et al., 2008a, Campbell et al., 2009, Beery and Zucker, 2010, Ophir et al.