Endocrine Activity and the Ontogeny of Social Interactions and Bonding

在我们人类和其他物种中，身体对压力的生理反应和重要社会伙伴的存在之间存在着重要的、但仍然知之甚少的关系。一方面，与之形成强烈联系的社会伙伴的存在往往可以减少生理应激反应，而另一方面，与压力相关的激素水平的降低似乎促进了社会纽带的形成。目前的项目将研究这些影响，以及随着个体形成不同年龄的社会关系和神经内分泌活动的正常发育变化，它们在整个生命周期中是如何变化的。这些问题将在豚鼠身上进行研究，因为它们在社会行为影响应激激素水平的方式上与灵长类动物相似，而且这些问题可以通过更大的实验控制，更经济地，在合理的时间内，在这种啮齿动物身上进行研究。该项目将评估一生中各种社会伙伴对压力激素水平的影响；研究这种影响如何随社会交往和应激激素反应的正常年龄变化而变化；并评估改变激素反应如何影响成人社会关系的形成。这些研究将为压力和社会互动相关的基本生物行为过程的发展提供新的信息，并将在他们的纵向方法中提供独特的贡献。这项工作还将整合研究和本科教育，让对生命科学事业感兴趣的有前途的本科生参与研究的各个方面。

In both our own and other species, important, but still poorly understood, relations exist between the body's physiological reaction to stress and the presence of significant social partners. On the one hand, the presence of social partners with which a strong bond has been formed can often reduce the physiological stress response, while on the other, reductions in stress-related hormone levels seem to promote the formation of social bonds. The current project will examine these effects and how they change over the life span as individuals form differing age-specific social relations and undergo normal developmental changes in neuroendocrine activity. These questions will be studied in guinea pigs because of their similarity to primates in the ways that social behavior affects stress hormone levels, and because these questions can be studied with greater experimental control, more economically, and in a reasonable period of time in this rodent species. This project will assess the impact of various social partners throughout the life span on stress hormone levels; examine how this impact varies with normal age-specific changes in social interactions and stress hormone responsiveness; and assess how altering hormone responsiveness affects the formation of adult social bonds. These studies will provide new information on the development of basic biobehavioral processes related to stress and social interactions, and they will provide a unique contribution in their longitudinal approach. The work will also integrate research and undergraduate education by involving promising undergraduates interested in careers in the life sciences in every aspect of the studies.