Increased social interaction in Shank2-deficient mice following acute social isolation

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is neuropsychiatric disorder with a gender specific risk. Although social impairment in ASD is one of the well characterized phenotypes, loneliness issue resides in patients with ASD and emerging reports show gender distribution in symptoms. Acute social isolation increases the motivation to socially interact in a gender-dependent manner, as only the male mice show increase in sociability following isolation. However, it remains to be explored whether the effects of loneliness in ASD differ between genders. Here, we used Shank2-deficient (Shank2−/−) mice, one of the animal models of ASD, to examine the sociability changes after acute social isolation. While only the male wild-type (WT) mice display increased sociability following 24-h isolation, both sexes of Shank2−/− mice show an increase in social interaction following isolation. These observations provide evidence that animal models of ASD have the sensitivity to acute social isolation and further show the motivation to socially interact. ; This work was supported by the National Honor Scientist Program of Korea to B.K.K. (NRF-2012R1A3A1050385) and National Research Foundation of Korea to J.E.C. (NRF-2022R1A6A3A01086593).