Abstract |
Social defeat in mice is used as a model for examining stress-induced pathology. The social defeat procedure yields two phenotypes: resistant, characterized by high interaction levels, and susceptible, characterized by low interaction levels. Resistance and susceptibility in mice has been used to examine the neurobiological mechanisms contributing to resilience or susceptibility, respectively, to stress-induced disease. In our lab, however, we found that resistance to social defeat was associated with increased conditioned fear, delayed fear extinction and increased contextual fear generalization. We hypothesize that the resistant phenotype might be characterized by poor behavioral inhibition. In this study, several paradigms were used to 1) test the hypothesis that resistance is associated with poor behavioral inhibition and 2) develop predictive behavioral indicators of resistance and susceptibility to social defeat. We first examined whether differences in innate social interaction would predict stress-induced behavioral phenotypes. Results suggested that the mice learned to associate social interaction as a safe environment and were interactive even after social stress. Next, defeated mice were trained in passive avoidance, and results suggested that resistant mice show deficits in inhibiting impulsive behaviors. These results, however, are only seen after social defeat. Latent inhibition tests will also be used to determine if resistant mice will freeze more than susceptible and control mice due to poor behavioral inhibition. Overall, the present study uses these paradigms to further characterize and predict behavioral differences between resistant and susceptible mice.
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Modified Abstract |
Social defeat in mice is used to examine stress-induced pathology. Social defeat yields two phenotypes: resistant, characterized by high interaction levels, and susceptible, characterized by low interaction levels. We hypothesize that the resistant phenotype might be characterized by poor behavioral inhibition. In this study, prior social interaction tests, passive avoidance, and latent inhibition studies were used to test this hypothesis and develop predictive behavioral indicators of resistance and susceptibility to social defeat. Overall, results suggest that resistant mice show deficits in inhibiting impulsive behaviors. These results, however, are only seen after social defeat. Latent inhibition tests will determine if resistant mice will freeze more due to poor behavioral inhibition.
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