Social Self-Administration

Social self-administration (social conditioned place preference variant or operant social reward) measures the reinforcing value of social interaction by requiring animals to perform an operant response (lever press or nose poke) to gain access to a conspecific. This paradigm, adapted from drug self-administration methodology, quantifies social motivation using the same behavioral economic framework applied to substance reward, enabling direct comparison of social versus non-social reinforcer value.

Primary dependent variables include active responses (lever presses or nose pokes yielding social access), inactive responses (control operandum), breakpoint on progressive ratio schedules, social interaction duration during earned access periods, and demand curve elasticity parameters (Q0, alpha, Pmax). The protocol can incorporate choice procedures between social access and alternative reinforcers such as food or drugs to generate preference hierarchies.

ConductMaze controls the operant chamber hardware including response levers, nose-poke ports, cue lights, and the automated door or partition that gates access to the social compartment. The system implements fixed-ratio, progressive-ratio, and behavioral economics schedules, times social access periods, and detects both operant responses and social interaction behaviors through zone-based video tracking of the subject-stimulus pair.