Elife: The winner effect and social status may affect the ability to resist stress

Click the blue word to pay attention to that our social hierarchy is highly conservative in evolution.
It exists in many species such as insects, fish, rodents, non-human primates and humans.
The level of social hierarchy determines the allocation of survival resources
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In human beings, the standard to measure social hierarchy status is socioeconomic status (SES)
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Although the social hierarchy in animals is not as complicated as in human society, they have something in common: low social hierarchy is closely related to poor health
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On September 28, 2021, the Scott J Russo research team of the Nash Family Neuroscience Department of Icahn School of Medicine found that it may not be so simple to assess stress response by social hierarchy.
The winner effect may be one of the influencing factors
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Researchers will form an internal social hierarchy after living in groups of mice for a month, and then evaluate them through an 18-day drill pipe experiment, and screen out the dominant position (David scores above 3 points, accounting for about 25%), middle-low position And inferior mice (David score below -3 points, about 25%)
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How will these mice of different social classes change after chronic stress? They further used the chronic social frustration stress model (allowing one mouse to attack another mouse).
After the middle- and inferior-positioned male mice showed obvious social avoidance behaviors, they were sensitive to stress but had advantages.
Status male mice behaved normally, that is, resistance to stress
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In female mice, no matter what position they are in, social disorders will appear after stress
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In another non-social chronic stress model, stress does not change the existing social hierarchy of mice, and only causes social disorders in disadvantaged mice
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Therefore, this shows that social class cannot be used as an effective predictor of stress response, and this prediction can be achieved under certain stressful environments
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The researchers put the dominant mice in the A squirrel cage and the dominant mice in the B squirrel cage together, and the social hierarchy is re-formed after a period of time.
The dominant mouse is called DOM-DOM, and the disadvantaged mouse is called DOM.
– SUB
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In a similar way, the inferior position mice in the two cages A and B will also re-form a new hierarchical relationship.
The dominant position mouse is called SUB-DOM, and the inferior position mouse is called SUB-SUB
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After such social hierarchy reconstruction, DOM-DOM mice that experience chronic social frustration stress still show resistance to stress, which indicates that high social hierarchy may have a certain degree of resistance to stress
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There is no difference in stress sensitivity between SUB-DOM mice and SUB-SUB mice, and there is no such difference between females and males
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This shows that the previous winner effect may and may affect the predictability of social hierarchy to stress response
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In addition, these disadvantaged mice did not show obvious stress susceptibility in the non-social stress model, which further indicates the limitation of social grade in predicting stress response
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In general, this article found that it is not so simple to achieve accurate prediction of social stress response (resistance or sensitivity) by social hierarchy.
This prediction is effective in the chronic social stress model, but it is not effective in other stress models
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Subsequent research found that the previous winner effect and peer social hierarchy will affect the stress response
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[References] https://doi.
org/10.
7554/eLife.
71401 The pictures in the text are from the references