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Updated: Nov 15, 2025

Quantifying Social Motivation in Mice Using Operant Conditioning
Published on: August 8, 2015
Dataset of reaching behavior for reward in social situations in mice
Masatoshi Ukezono1,2, Yuji Takano3
1Department of Neuropsychopharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Kodaira, Tokyo, Japan.
Abstract:
The data presented in this article is from a paper entitled "An experimental task to examine the mirror neuron system in mice: Laboratory mice understand the movement intentions of other mice based on their own experience" (Ukezono and Takano, 2021). This article contains individual data on reaching behavior for reward in social situations in mice. In the reaching room, the mice first learned how to acquire food by reaching their limbs. The mice that had learned reaching were placed in an observation room where they could observe the reaching activity of another mouse in the reaching room. The data includes all animals' properties and conditions, the pairing state of another mouse (cage mate or non-cage mate), and a set of behavioral analyses. Our data have the potential to be reused for analyzing interaction behaviors of mice placed in front of rewards and developing experiments for behavioral neuroscience research on the mirror neuron system in mice.

