USV, mostly 50-kHz-calls, are easily induced by manipulating the animal in a way that mimics the rough-and-tumble play in juvenile rats or, literally, by tickling them [111 (
link)]. Tickling sessions can be used to induce playfulness and social joyfulness and the number of emitted USV may be used as a reflection and measure of positive affective states of rats [112 (
link)]. Our rats were tickled for five consecutive days at PND 45–49, as described previously [113 (
link),114 (
link),115 (
link)]. After the first three days of learning/habituation, at days 4 and 5, i.e., PND 48 and 49, the rats were taken for further analysis. Each day the rats were transported into the 58 × 37 × 20 cm tickling cage for a 30 s wait period. Then the tickling session was initiated with gentle poking of the animal’s sides, rubbing its scruff, then flipping the rat on its back and tickling it with rapid finger movements around the belly. The tickling lasted for 15 s and was followed by a 15 s period when the animal was allowed to follow experimenter’s hand. The tickling-follow scheme was repeated four times and the whole tickling session lasted for 120 s. USV were recorded with an
UltraSoundGate CM16/CMPA microphone placed 30 cm above the cage, collected using Avisoft Recorder software, and analyzed using the SASLab Pro software (all from Avisoft Bioacustics, Glienicke/Nordbahn, Germany).
Cieślik M., Gąssowska-Dobrowolska M., Jęśko H., Czapski G.A., Wilkaniec A., Zawadzka A., Dominiak A., Polowy R., Filipkowski R.K., Boguszewski P.M., Gewartowska M., Frontczak-Baniewicz M., Sun G.Y., Beversdorf D.Q, & Adamczyk A. (2020). Maternal Immune Activation Induces Neuroinflammation and Cortical Synaptic Deficits in the Adolescent Rat Offspring. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 21(11), 4097.