How we deal with stressful situations may be influenced by who we’re with at the time.
Alexei Morozov, research scientist with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech University, looks into the social influence.
Alexei Morozov, a research scientist with the Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.
Sex Differences in how Mice – and Maybe People – Deal with Stressful Situations
When danger looms, animals often freeze — it’s one of nature’s oldest defenses. But freezing isn’t always a solo act. In social animals, including mice, fear can be contagious. When paired up, familiar mice often mirror each other. If one freezes, the other does too. We found that the way this behavioral duet happens depends on the sex of the mice.
We trained mice to associate this sound [PAUSE, INSERT SOUND] with a mild but unpleasant stimulus. Then, we played the sound and watched how mice reacted. When we tested them in pairs, we saw clear patterns.
Male mice mostly copied each other — when one male froze or moved, the other followed. When we tested female mice in pairs they acted differently. They self-corrected. If one female took an action that wasn’t matched by the other, she often changed course, adjusting her behavior to stay in sync.
These strategies — male imitation versus female self-correction — are both effective, but they rely on different kinds of social processing.
Then we added stress. Same-sex pairs often fell out of sync. But male-female pairs remained coordinated, regardless of whether the mice were familiar with each other, and used both coordination strategies. This stood out.
Our findings suggest male-female pairs are more flexible in behavioral coordination — making them more resilient to emotional pressure.
Though our study was in mice, the findings offer clues about social and emotional signaling during stress and could teach us about similar brain mechanisms in humans. It could help us understand the impact of sex on conditions like anxiety or PTSD, where emotional regulation and social connection are disrupted.
By revealing the nuanced ways male and female brains navigate stress together, this work opens new directions for studying how social factors influence fear and resilience to stress.
Read More:
[VT News] – Even under stress, male-female pairs had each other’s backs
