Conspecific interactions predict social transmission of fear in female rats

Social transmission of fear occurs in a subset of individuals, where an Observer displays a fear response to a previously neutral stimulus after witnessing or interacting with a conspecific Demonstrator during fear memory retrieval. The conditions under which fear can be acquired socially in rats have received attention in recent years, and suggest that social factors modulate social transmission of information. We previously found that one such factor, social rank, impacts fear conditioning by proxy in male rats. Here, we aimed to investigate whether social roles in females also have an influence on social transmission of fear. In-line with previous findings in males, we found that social interactions in the home cage can provide insight into the social relationship between female rats and that these relationships predict the degree of fear acquired by-proxy. These results suggest that play behavior may provide a valuable assessment of dominance hierarchy in female rats.