Early social behaviors like juvenile play are important for normal cognitive and social development. Deficits in these behaviors are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism. Rat juvenile rough-and-tumble play is a useful behavioral biomarker of neurodevelopment, and is sensitive to chemical factors such as pre and neonatal hormones. Despite a rich body of literature characterizing hormonal programming of rodent juvenile play, the physiological mechanisms that regulate the organization of play behavior are not well characterized. Synthesizing results to understand the role of endocrine signaling in the development of play behavior remains difficult due to methodological inconsistency across studies. In this review, we synthesize what is known about hormonal mechanisms programming play, advocate standardized protocols for investigating rat play, and identify key areas where future research is needed. A synthetic understanding of the relationship between endocrine signaling and behavioral programming will improve our ability to understand the development and onset of neurodevelopmental disorders in humans and ultimately will help prevent these devastating conditions.
Keywords: Behavioral programming; Hormone signaling; Neurodevelopment; Play behavior.
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