An appetite for aggressive behavior? Female rats, too, derive reward from winning aggressive interactions

Börchers, Stina; Carl, Jil; Schormair, Katharina; Krieger, Jean-Philippe; Asker, Mohammed; Edvardsson, Christian E; Jerlhag, Elisabeth; Skibicka, Karolina P

doi:10.1038/s41398-023-02608-x

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Börchers, S., Carl, J., Schormair, K., Krieger, J.-P., Asker, M., Edvardsson, C. E., Jerlhag, E., & Skibicka, K. P. (2023). An appetite for aggressive behavior? Female rats, too, derive reward from winning aggressive interactions. Translational Psychiatry, 13(1), 331. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-023-02608-x

Abstract

While aggression is an adaptive behavior mostly triggered by competition for resources, it can also in and of itself be rewarding. Based on the common notion that female rats are not aggressive, much of aggression research has been centered around males, leading to a gap in the understanding of the female aggression neurobiology. Therefore, we asked whether intact virgin female rats experience reward from an aggressive interaction and assessed aggression seeking behavior in rats of both sexes. To validate the involvement of reward sig