Objective As an important way of early social deprivation, separation of mother and infant has always been a classic animal model to study the adverse effects of early life stress on individual physiology and psychology. This article reviews the research results of common behavioral paradigms and related biological mechanisms of rat and mouse MS models, and clarifies the different effects of the duration and frequency of maternal infant separation on the experimental results.
Methods Through Wanfang, CNKI, Pubmed and other platforms, we searched the relevant literatures about the long-term cognitive and psychological effects of early life stress on rats and mice using MS model in recent years, and expounded the behavioral evaluation methods, results and potential mechanisms in the articles.
Results The establishment of rodent MS model provided a new method for people to explore long-term psychosomatic diseases related to negative events in early life, and showed wide applicability.
Conclusion At present, different studies have explored the cognitive, psychological changes and pathogenesis of animal models in many aspects on this basis, and made some progress. However, the cognitive and behavioral changes caused by different separation frequencies and durations are uncertain, and their effects on gene expression of offspring and parents also need further research.