Effects of Serotonin in Mice

Description

Effects of altering serotonin levels on social interactions of mice

Format

A data frame with 48 observations on the following 3 variables.

Contacts

Number of social contacts the mouse had during the experiment

Sex

F=female or M=male

Genotype

Minus, Mixed, or Plus (see description below)

Details

Serotonin is a chemical that influences mood balance in humans. But how does it affect mice? Scientists genetically altered mice by "knocking out" the expression of a gene, tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (Tph2), that regulates serotonin production. With careful breeding, the scientists produced three types of mice that we label as “Minus” for Tph2-/-, “Plus” for Tph2+/+, “Mixed” for Tph2+/-. The variable Genotype records Minus/Plus/Mixed. The variable Contacts is the number of social contacts that a mouse had with other mice during an experiment and the variable Sex is “M” for males and “F” for females.

Source

Beis D, Holzwarth K, Flinders M, Bader M, Wohr M, Alenina N., (2015) "Brain serotonin deficiency leads to social communication deficits in mice," Biol. Lett. 11:20150057.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2015.0057

Once you go to the above link, to get the data, click on the "Figures and Data" tab. Then click on the "Juvenile SocInter Behavior Data" link to download a hairy data file that needs to be cleaned a great deal to get our data.