MouseBrain R Documentation

## 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.