Play and the development of the brain's social skills

在非人类动物中最常见的游戏形式是“打闹”游戏或“游戏战斗”，这是一种非伤害性的竞争性互动形式，其中伙伴们相互竞争一些优势，例如能够轻轻地咬他们的伙伴。行为机制的存在，降低了风险的游戏战斗升级为严重的战斗，通过将一定程度的合作纳入竞争;这种竞争和合作的并列，使重复的身体接触，目前在发挥奖励。当像老鼠这样的动物在少年时期被剥夺了参与同伴游戏的机会时，它们成年后的社交技能就会变得贫乏，以至于它们成功交配或谈判支配关系的能力就会减弱。我的研究表明，社会化饲养的老鼠的前额叶皮层受损会产生类似于被剥夺玩耍的老鼠的社会缺陷。我的实验室还表明，当动物在幼年时有不同的玩耍经历时，前额叶皮层神经元的解剖结构也会发生变化。因此，我的理论是，青少年时期的游戏打斗经验对于那些对社会能力至关重要的大脑区域的发展是必要的。在拟议的研究中，我将使用实验室老鼠来调查游戏体验的哪些方面对大脑的发育至关重要，并描述一个更有能力的社会大脑执行更有能力的社会行为的机制。例如，提高的表现可能来自于增强的将复杂动作排序在一起的能力，或者通过减弱由新颖和不可预测的社会环境引起的恐惧的影响。社交能力的提高也可能源于对社交信号的解释和/或传递的改善，例如老鼠在社交互动（包括玩耍）期间发出的无数50 kHz叫声。我还将对不同灵长类动物的游戏进行比较分析，以确定不同物种之间的游戏战斗组织是否因其社会行为的复杂性而异。根据我的初步研究结果，我假设，物种与更复杂的社会系统，那些需要他们谈判更多样化的社会关系，有模式的发挥作为青少年的方式，修改，提供培训的社会技能，他们将需要作为成年人。这些研究将描述社会能力如何发展，以及青少年游戏经验对这种发展的贡献。发挥在发展社会技能和谈判关系的关键作用，导致这项研究的影响超出了其在基础科学的价值，包括住房圈养社会动物的改善，并在制定战略，以促进对儿童有帮助的经验。

The most common form of play in non-human animals is "rough-and-tumble" play or "play fighting", which is a non-injurious form of competitive interaction in which partners compete for some advantage over one another, such as being able to bite their partner gently. Behavioural mechanisms exist that reduce the risk of play fighting escalating into serious fighting by incorporating some level of cooperation into the competition; this juxtaposition of competition and cooperation makes the repeated bodily contact present in play rewarding. When animals such as rats are deprived in the juvenile period of the opportunity to engage in peer-peer play, they have impoverished social skills as adults, such that their ability to mate successfully or negotiate dominance relationships is diminished. My work has shown that damage to the prefrontal cortex of socially reared rats produces social deficits similar to those present in rats that had been deprived of play. My laboratory has also shown that the anatomy of the neurons of the prefrontal cortex is modified when varying the experiences of play that animals have had as juveniles. Therefore, I theorize that experience with play fighting as juveniles is necessary for the development of those areas of the brain that are critical for social competency. In the proposed research, I will use laboratory rats to investigate what aspects of the play experience are critical for the development of the brain and characterize the mechanisms by which a more competent social brain executes more competent social behaviour. For example, improved performance may arise from the enhanced ability to sequence together complex movements or by attenuating the effects of fear arising from novel and unpredictable social contexts. Improved social competence may also arise from improved interpretation and/or delivery of social signals, such as the myriad 50-kHz calls that rats emit during social interactions, including play. I will also conduct a comparative analysis of play in a diverse range of primates to determine whether the organization of play fighting differs among species depending on the complexity of their social behaviour. Based on my preliminary findings, I hypothesize that species with more complex social systems, ones requiring them to negotiate more varied social relationships, have patterns of play as juveniles that are modified in ways that provide training for the social skills they will need as adults. These studies will characterize how social competence develops and the contribution made to this development by the experience of play as juveniles. The critical role of play in developing social skills and negotiating relationships leads this research to have implications beyond its value in basic science to include improvements in housing captive social animals and in developing strategies to facilitate experiences helpful to children.