ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2022
Social Play Behavior Is Critical for the Development of Prefrontal Inhibitory Synapses and Cognitive Flexibility in Rats.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Early life adversity disrupts adult social reward motivation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Neurodevelopmental effects of early life stress: PFC and cognition.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Neural Mechanisms of Social Homeostasis: Dynamic Range Plasticity.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Impairment of the GABAergic system in the prefrontal cortex of male heroin addicts.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- The role of sensory experience in the maturation of prefrontal cortical circuits.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- From welfare indicator to welfare contributor: the role of play in building flexibility and resilience in captive animals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Impairment of the GABAergic system in the anterior midcingulate cortex of heroin-addicted males.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Article
- Evaluation of the Effects of Enlarged Housing on Social Play and Reward Seeking in Rats.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Groups of familiar male rats form unstable partner preferences when play fighting during the juvenile period.iScience · 2025Article
- Neurexin1α knockout in rats causes aberrant social behaviour: relevance for autism and schizophrenia.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Maternal exposure to buprenorphine, but not methadone, during pregnancy reduces social play behavior across two generations of offspring.Psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Impairment of the GABAergic system in the anterior insular cortex of heroin-addicted males.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Article
- Early life stress and altered social behaviors: A perspective across species.Neuroscience research · 2025Review
- Juvenile male rats form preferences based on strain when playing in groups but not in pairs.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Development of the rodent prefrontal cortex: circuit formation, plasticity, and impacts of early life stress.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2025Review
- Rat Models in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Research: Strengths, Limitations, and Implications for Translational Studies.Pathophysiology : the official journal of the International Society for Pathophysiology · 2024Review
- Neonatal paw pricking alters adolescent behavior in a sex-dependent manner and sucrose partially remediates the effects.Physiology & behavior · 2024Article
- Impact of play restriction during the COVID-19 pandemic on mental well-being in children with a chronic condition.European journal of pediatrics · 2024Article
- Play partner preferences among groups of unfamiliar juvenile male rats.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Neurobehavioral Characterization of Perinatal Oxycodone-Exposed Offspring in Early Adolescence.Journal of neuroimmune pharmacology : the official journal of the Society on NeuroImmune Pharmacology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sensory driven activity during early life is critical for setting up the proper connectivity of the sensory cortices. We ask here whether social play behavior, a particular form of social interaction that is highly abundant during postweaning development, is equally important for setting up connections in the developing prefrontal cortex (PFC). Young male rats were deprived from social play with peers during the period in life when social play behavior normally peaks [postnatal day 21-42] (SPD rats), followed by resocialization until adulthood. We recorded synaptic currents in layer 5 cells in slices from medial PFC of adult SPD and control rats and observed that inhibitory synaptic currents were reduced in SPD slices, while excitatory synaptic currents were unaffected. This was associated with a decrease in perisomatic inhibitory synapses from parvalbumin-positive GABAergic cells. In parallel experiments, adult SPD rats achieved more reversals in a probabilistic reversal learning (PRL) task, which depends on the integrity of the PFC, by using a more simplified cognitive strategy than controls. Interestingly, we observed that one daily hour of play during SPD partially rescued the behavioral performance in the PRL, but did not prevent the decrease in PFC inhibitory synaptic inputs. Our data demonstrate the importance of unrestricted social play for the development of inhibitory synapses in the PFC and cognitive skills in adulthood and show that specific synaptic alterations in the PFC can result in a complex behavioral outcome.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.