Social Conditioned Place Preference

Social conditioned place preference (sCPP) adapts the classical CPP paradigm to measure the rewarding properties of social interaction by using a conspecific partner as the unconditioned stimulus. During conditioning, the subject is confined with a novel social partner in one compartment and alone in the other. The development of sCPP depends on oxytocinergic signaling in the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens, as well as serotonergic modulation through dorsal raphe projections. This paradigm is particularly valuable for studying social reward deficits in autism spectrum disorder and social anhedonia models.

The sCPP score is calculated as post-conditioning minus pre-conditioning time in the social-paired compartment, analogous to drug CPP. Positive scores indicate social reward, while absent or negative scores suggest social indifference or aversion. Transition frequency between compartments reflects exploratory motivation, and time in the center neutral zone indexes approach-avoidance conflict. Social interaction quality during conditioning can be scored simultaneously to correlate active social behaviors with preference magnitude.

ConductMaze manages the sCPP protocol with dual-subject tracking during conditioning phases to simultaneously capture the experimental subject's position and the social partner's behavior. The software implements automated stimulus animal rotation schedules and tracks cumulative social interaction during conditioning. Social partner containment options (free interaction or mesh barrier) are configurable through the protocol editor. Pre-post preference shifts and within-session dynamics are computed and visualized across the full experimental timeline.