Abstract

Social support from a spouse, long-term partner, or someone who provides emotional or instrumental support may protect against consequences of aging, including mediating behavioral stress reactivity and altering neurobiological process that underlie short-term stress responses. Therefore, long-term social bonding may have behavioral and neurobiological benefits. The socially monogamous prairie vole provides a valuable experimental model for investigating the benefits of long-term social bonds on short-term stress reactivity in aging animals, given their unique social structure of forming enduring opposite-sex bonds, living in family groups, and bi-parental rearing strategies. Male-female pairs of long-term, cohabitating prairie voles were investigated for short-term behavioral and neuroendocrine stress reactivity following either long-term social pairing (control), or a period of social isolation. In Experiment 1, social isolation was associated with altered behavioral reactivity to an acute swim stressor, and greater neural activation in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus, as well as specifically the parvocellular region, following the swim stressor (vs. control). In Experiment 2, social isolation was associated with greater corticosterone reactivity following an acute restraint stressor (vs. control). No sex differences were observed. Exploratory correlation and subgroup analyses revealed systematic relationships among various demographic variables (such as age of the subjects, amount of time the pair cohabitated together, and number of litters the pair reared together) and the behavioral and neuroendocrine outcome measures. These findings may inform our understanding of the benefits of long-term social bonding on modulating short-term behavioral and neuroendocrine responses to stress.

• LAY SUMMARY

• Receiving social support from a long-term spouse or partner, or having a strong support network from friends, may have important health benefits as people age. In aging monogamous prairie voles, social isolation from a long-term social partner disrupted behaviors and short-term stress responses, whereas living with a long-term partner protected against these disruptions. This research is important for our understanding of the benefits of social support on stress responses as we age.

 抽象的

来自配偶、长期伴侣或提供情感或工具支持的人的社会支持可以防止衰老的后果，包括调节行为压力反应和改变构成短期压力反应的神经生物学过程。因此，长期的社会联系可能具有行为和神经生物学益处。社会一夫一妻制的草原田鼠为研究长期社会关系对衰老动物短期应激反应的益处提供了一个有价值的实验模型，因为它们形成持久的异性关系、生活在家庭群体中和双性恋的独特社会结构。 - 父母的教养策略。研究人员对长期同居的雌雄草原田鼠在长期社会配对（对照）或一段时间的社会隔离后的短期行为和神经内分泌应激反应进行了研究。在实验1中，社会隔离与对急性游泳应激源的行为反应改变以及游泳应激源后下丘脑室旁核，特别是小细胞区域的更大的神经激活有关（与对照相比）。在实验 2 中，社会隔离与急性束缚应激源（与对照）后皮质酮反应性升高相关。没有观察到性别差异。探索性相关性和亚组分析揭示了各种人口统计变量（例如受试者的年龄、夫妻共同生活的时间以及夫妻共同抚养的窝数）与行为和神经内分泌结果测量之间的系统关系。 这些发现可能有助于我们理解长期社会联系对于调节短期行为和神经内分泌对压力反应的好处。

•  外行总结

• 
  随着人们年龄的增长，从长期配偶或伴侣那里获得社会支持，或者拥有来自朋友的强大支持网络，可能会对健康产生重要的好处。在老年一夫一妻制的草原田鼠中，与长期社会伴侣的社会隔离会扰乱行为和短期压力反应，而与长期伴侣生活在一起可以免受这些干扰。这项研究对于我们了解随着年龄的增长，社会支持对压力反应的益处非常重要。