Sex differences in emotionality in C3H/HeH mice, with hypogonadal mutant to distinguish activational effects of gonadal hormones

The C3H/HeH mouse strain has a mutant hypogonadal (hpg) variant, providing an animal model to examine the activational effects of sex hormones because reproductive maturation is arrested at a neonatal stage. Thus in the adult mouse, the circulating concentrations of sex steroids are extremely low. The present study used a series of tests to distinguish sex differences in behaviour: open field, locomotor activity, hyponeophagia, and novel location recognition. The results showed some evidence for a role of sex hormones in emotionality underscoring the potential utility of the hpg model, to distinguish activational effects in the C3H/HeH strain. However, the direction that the sex differences took varied by task: whilst males showed the predicted sex difference of relatively greater anxiety in the open field, hyponeophagia tests suggested higher emotionality in females. The hpg mice of both sexes showed a reduction in anxiety measured as hyponeophagia. Overall it can be concluded that this set of experiments supports the potential of the hpg model to investigate hormonal influences on emotionality.