An automated two-choice social operant task for probing moment-to-moment changes in social satiety

Animals routinely make self-motivated choices about whether to initiate interactions with same- or opposite-sex partners. However, it remains unclear whether these choices are motivated by drive states that exhibit signatures of moment-to-moment social satiety. To test this, we designed a fully automated two-choice social operant paradigm where mice can choose between same- and opposite-sex social rewards that are delivered for interaction with systematically varying durations. We find that although both males and females have stable choice biases, only males exhibit behavioral signatures of moment-to-moment social satiety. Using a simple normative model to capture patterns of social choice, we observe that behavior is better fit by a model with a single social drive and choice bias, rather than a model with independent drives for same- and opposite-sex interactions. Together, our data reveal behavioral signatures of social satiety and offer insights into the underlying homeostatic and motivational drives that govern social choices.