ArticleHormones and behavior2020
Oxytocin receptor antagonist reverses the blunting effect of pair bonding on fear learning in monogamous prairie voles.
Article in Hormones and behavior, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Systematic Review and Methodological Considerations for the Use of Single Prolonged Stress and Fear Extinction Retention in Rodents.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- Interactive impacts of social deprivation and intranasal oxytocin administration on oxytocin receptor density in prairie vole brains.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Oxytocinergic Signaling in Zebrafish: Translational Perspectives for Autism Spectrum Disorder.Journal of neurochemistry · 2026Review
- Chronic fluoxetine modulates perineuronal nets and inhibitory neuronal function in relation to behavioral outcomes.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2025Article
- Sex differences in structural and receptor mRNA expression in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex and a potential role of perineuronal nets in monogamous pair bond establishment (Peromyscus californicus).Biology of sex differences · 2025Article
- Article
- Overexpression of Motopsin, an Extracellular Serine Protease Related to Intellectual Disability, Promotes Adult Neurogenesis and Neuronal Responsiveness in the Dentate Gyrus.Molecular neurobiology · 2024Article
- Paternal absence and increased caregiving independently and interactively shape the development of male prairie voles at subadult and adult life stages.Hormones and behavior · 2024Article
- Conspecific interactions predict social transmission of fear in female rats.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Therapeutic uses of oxytocin in stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders.Cell & bioscience · 2023Review
- Partner separation rescues pair bond-induced decreases in hypothalamic oxytocin neural densities.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Interactions between thePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Social isolation and oxytocin antagonism increase emotion-related behaviors and heart rate in female prairie voles.Autonomic neuroscience : basic & clinical · 2022Article
- Morphological changes in the basolateral amygdala and behavioral disruptions associated with social isolation.Behavioural brain research · 2022Article
- Social Buffering as a Tool for Improving Rodent Welfare.Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2022Article
- Oxytocin, Dopamine, and Opioid Interactions Underlying Pair Bonding: Highlighting a Potential Role for Microglia.Endocrinology · 2021Review
- Oxytocin Promotes Accurate Fear Discrimination and Adaptive Defensive Behaviors.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Review
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Social relationships among spouses, family members, and friends are known to affect physical and mental health. In particular, long-lasting bonds between socio-sexual partners have profound effects on cognitive, social, emotional, and physical well-being. We have previously reported that pair bonding in monogamous prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) is prevented by a single prolonged stress (SPS) paradigm, which causes behavioral and endocrine symptoms resembling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients in rats (Arai et al., 2016). Since fear memory function is crucial for anxiety-related disorders such as PTSD, we investigated the effects of pair bonding on fear learning in prairie voles. We applied an SPS paradigm to male prairie voles after the cohabitation with a male (cage-mate group) or female (pair-bonded group). The cage-mate group, but not the pair-bonded group, showed enhanced fear response in a contextual fear conditioning test following the SPS treatment. Immunohistochemical analyses revealed that cFos-positive cells in the central amygdala were increased in the pair-bonded group after the contextual fear conditioning test and that oxytocin immunoreactivity in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus was significantly higher in the pair-bonded group than the cage-mate group. This pair-bonding dependent blunting of fear memory response was confirmed by a passive avoidance test, another fear-based learning test. Interestingly, intracerebroventricular injection of an oxytocin receptor antagonist 30 min before the passive avoidance test blocked the blunting effect of pair bonding on fear learning. Thus, pair bonding between socio-sexual partners results in social buffering in the absence of the partner, blunting fear learning, which may be mediated by oxytocin signaling.
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