The importance of social interactions has been reported in a variety of animal species. In human and rodent models, social isolation is known to alter social behaviors and change anxiety or depression levels. During the coronavirus pandemic, although people could communicate with each other through other sensory cues, social touch was mostly prohibited under different levels of physical distancing policies. These social restrictions inspired us to explore the necessity of physical contact, which has rarely been investigated in previous studies on mouse social interactions. We first conducted a long-term observation to show that pair-housed mice in a standard laboratory cage spent nearly half the day in direct physical contact with each other. Furthermore, we designed a split-housing condition to demonstrate that even with free access to visual, auditory, and olfactory social signals, the lack of social touch significantly increased anxiety-like behaviors and changed social behaviors. There were correspondingly higher levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 in the hippocampus in mice with no access to physical contact. Our study demonstrated the necessity of social touch for the maintenance of mental health in mice and could have important implications for human social interactions.
Keywords: Social touch; anxiety-like behaviors; cytokines; social behaviors; social isolation.