Sexual Differentiation of Social Play in Rat Pups Is Mediated by the Neonatal Androgen-Receptor System
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Social play in juvenile rats, like that in several primate species (including humans), is sexually dimorphic. Males initiate and become involved in more play-fights than do their female peers. The play-fighting of female pups can be masculinized by neonatal exposure to either testosterone or 5α-dihydrotestosterone, suggesting that in the rat the masculinization of social play is mediated by the androgen-receptor system. In this paper we present evidence that further supports this hypothesis. In the first study we found that male pups treated with the antiandrogen, flutamide, during the neonatal period (days 1 through 10 of life) engaged in less play-fighting than did control males. Moreover, flutamide-treated, male pups play-fought no more frequently than did untreated females. In a subsequent study we found that flutamide, which blocked the masculinization of social play, dramatically reduced a testosterone-induced translocation of androgen receptors to the nuclear compartment in various brain regions (as measured by a nuclear exchange assay) in neonates. In a final study we examined the play-fighting of juvenile rat pups bearing the testicular feminization mutation (Tfm); animals that are known to be insensitive to androgens and show a marked deficiency of androgen receptors. Tfm males engaged in significantly less play-fighting than did control males. The Tfm males, like the flutamide-treated males, engaged in play-fighting at rates that were comparable to those of females. Taken together with previous data these findings strongly suggest that the sexual differentiation of social play in juvenile rats is mediated by the androgen-receptor system during the neonatal period.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".