Early-life sleep disruption impairs subtle social behaviours in prairie voles: a pose-estimation study

Early-life sleep disruption (ELSD) has been shown to have long-lasting effects on social behaviour in adult prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster), including impaired expression of pair bonding during partner preference testing. However, due to the limitations of manual behaviour tracking, the effects of ELSD across the time course of pair bonding have not yet been described, hindering our ability to trace mechanisms. Here, we used pose estimation to track prairie voles during opposite-sex cohabitation, the process leading to pair bonding. Male-female pairs were allowed to interact through a mesh divider in the home cage for 72-h, providing variables of body direction, distance-to-divider and locomotion speed. We found that control males displayed periodic patterns of body orientation towards females during cohabitation. In contrast, ELSD males showed reduced duration and ultradian periodicity of these body orientation behaviours towards females. Furthermore, in both sexes, ELSD altered s..., Subjects
Prairie voles were bred and reared by both parents at the Veterans Affairs Portland Health Care System. Litters with both males and females were submitted to early-life sleep disruption (ELSD) or Control conditions when pups were at postnatal day 14 - 21 (P14-P21; see below for ELSD procedure). Subjects were weaned at P21 into groups of 2-4 same-sex siblings per cage [Male-ELSD (n = 13), Male-Ctrl (n = 14), Female-ELSD (n = 13), Female-Ctrl (n = 15)] and co-housed at the same breeding site until reaching adulthood. The groups of siblings were transferred between P50-P90 to the University of Michigan Medical School for the main recordings. Prairie voles were allowed to acclimate to the facility transfer for two weeks before experimentation. Housing conditions were the same throughout experiments, including controlled temperature, ventilation and humidity, bedding, ad libitum food (mixed diet of rabbit chow, corn, and cracked oats) and water (bottles/hydrogel), environmental enri..., Proprietary: Matlab (Mathworks). Open-source alternative: Python., # Early-life sleep disruption impairs subtle social behaviours in prairie voles: A computer vision study

## Description of the Data and file structure

Contents of file: ProcessedCohabitData.mat

* VideoParams (1x1 struct)
Specifies the original video frame rate (25 Hz) and the bin size used to analyze the data (1 s). It also specifies the dimensions of the recorded area in centimeters (cm).

* ProcessedCohabitData (56x11 table)

Rows are individual animals. Columns 1 through 6 contain animal information (e.g., sex, group, etc.). Columns 7 through 11 contain the data, at single precision.

Column 7: One-column vector. Zeitgeber time in seconds.
Column 8: Two-column matrix. Body position coordinates (X and Y) relative to the recorded area, in cm.
Column 9: One-column vector. Body direction relative to the divider normalized -1 to 1 (-1 is opposite from the divider, 1 is toward the divider)
Column 10: One-column vector. Distance to divider in cm
Column ...