Social recognition in laboratory mice requires integration of behaviorally-induced somatosensory, auditory and olfactory cues.

In humans, discrimination between individuals, also termed social recognition, can rely on a single sensory modality, such as vision. By analogy, social recognition in rodents is thought to be based upon olfaction. Here, we hypothesized that social recognition in rodents relies upon integration of olfactory, auditory and somatosensory cues, hence requiring active behavior of social stimuli. Using distinct social recognition tests, we demonstrated that adult male mice do not exhibit recognition of familiar stimuli or learn the identity of novel stimuli that are inactive due to anesthesia. We further revealed that impairing the olfactory, somatosensory or auditory systems prevents behavioral recognition of familiar stimuli. Finally, we found that familiar and novel stimuli generate distinct movement patterns during social discrimination and that subjects react differentially to the movement of these stimuli. Thus, unlike what occurs in humans, social recognition in mice relies on integration of information from several sensory modalities.

Reducing fear overgeneralization in children using a novel perceptual discrimination task.

Fear generalization, while adaptive, can be detrimental when occurring in excess. To this end a perceptual discrimination training task was created with a goal of decreasing fear overgeneralization. The current study tested the effectiveness of the training task among typically-developing children. Participants (n = 73) were randomly assigned into a training, placebo or no task group. Following a differential fear-conditioning task, participants in the first two groups underwent the discrimination training or placebo task. An assessment task was then administered. Finally, all participants completed a fear generalization test, consisting of 11 morphs ranging in perceptual similarity from the threat cue to the safety cue. Physiological and self-report measures were collected. Fear-conditioning was achieved in both physiological and self-report measures. Further, in the assessment task, the training group showed better perceptual discrimination than did the placebo group. Last, the training group exhibited less overgeneralization of affective stimuli as indicated by a physiological measure than did the two control conditions. Findings suggest that the perceptual discrimination training task effectively moderated fear overgeneralization in children. This adds to previous evidence of the task's effectiveness among adults.