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Social motivation is critical to the development of typical social functioning. The root of the social challenges characteristic of autism is hypothesized to be a deficit in social motivation, specifically in one or more subcomponents (e.g. social reward seeking or social orienting). We developed a social operant conditioning task to quantify effort to access a social partner and concurrent social orienting in mice. We established that mice will work for access to a social partner, identified sex differences, and observed high test-retest reliability. We then benchmarked the method with two test-case manipulations. Shank3B mutants exhibited reduced social orienting and failed to show social reward seeking. Oxytocin receptor antagonism decreased social motivation, consistent with its role in social reward circuitry. Overall, we believe this method provides a valuable addition to the assessment of social phenotypes in rodent models of autism and the mapping of potentially sex-specific social motivation neural circuits. This repository includes the detailed protocols for assembly and operation of equipment, parts lists, and annotated scripts for data processing and analysis. |
