The benefits gained by young animals engaging in play fighting have been a subject of
conjecture for over a hundred years. Progress in understanding the behavioral development …

Adolescence is a developmental period when physical and cognitive abilities are optimized,
when social skills are consolidated, and when sexuality, adolescent behaviors, and frontal …

A groundbreaking study into the formative role of play in our lives Sergio and Vivien Pellis
have synthesized three decades of empirical research to create a remarkable work …

Play has long been identified as a potential welfare indicator because it often disappears
when animals are under fitness challenge and because it is thought to be accompanied by a …

Negative social experiences during adolescence are central features for several stress-
related mental illnesses. Social play fighting behavior in rats peaks during early …

Social connections are vital to survival throughout the animal kingdom and are dynamic
across the life span. There are debilitating consequences of social isolation and loneliness …

Adolescence is an evolutionarily conserved developmental phase characterized by
hormonal, physiological, neural and behavioral alterations evident widely across …

Social signals can serve as potent emotional triggers with powerful impacts on processes
from cognition to valence processing. How are social signals dynamically and flexibly …

Social interactions have been shown to be rewarding for adolescent and adult rats;
however, there has been little emphasis on comparing the strength of the rewarding value of …

Different rat and mouse models are used in studies of social interactions. Simple behavioral
measures, which are commonly used in the laboratory, allow to perform relatively short …