# Breaking bonds in prairie voles

> **NIH NIH R01** · FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $600,716

## Abstract

In humans, social attachment with partners, relatives, or friends act as a protective buffer against
many negative consequences of life stress, whereas lack of social attachments can lead to
serious pathologies including dysphoria, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, cardiovascular
problems, and immune system deficits. In the social prairie voles, acute and chronic social
isolation as well as partner separation induce anxiety and depression-like behaviors, enhance
stress response, and alter activities of several neurochemical systems, including the oxytocinergic
system. Data from our group and others have shown that oxytocin (OT) is involved not only in the
formation of pair bonds in this specie, but also in the response to social isolation/ partner
separation as well as social buffering of stress responses. In this proposal, we will verify the
overall hypothesis that breaking bonds in voles alter the OT circuitry projecting from the
hypothalamic PVN to the nucleus accumbens (which represents 90% of OT projections to nucleus
accumbens) and leads to negative consequences on social behaviors in male and female prairie
voles.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10763428
- **Project number:** 5R01MH125408-03
- **Recipient organization:** FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** MOHAMED KABBAJ
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $600,716
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-03-01 → 2026-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10763428

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10763428, Breaking bonds in prairie voles (5R01MH125408-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10763428. Licensed CC0.

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