Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-9-2020
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Alberto Del Arco
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
Repeated exposure to stress is known to have a myriad of effects on the brain, contributing to the development of psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety, depression, and drug addiction. For example, rats undergoing repeated social stress develop increased cocaine self-administration. These effects of stress are not well-understood and are related to changes in the brain reward system. This study investigated the effects of repeated social stress on reward-seeking behavior via the acquisition and extinction of a discriminative stimulus (DS) task and on anxiety-like behavior in the elevated plus maze (EPM). Male rats underwent intermittent social defeat (4 sessions in 10 days) using the resident-intruder paradigm. Animals were tested in the DS task in between stress sessions for Experiment 1 and one month after the last session for Experiment 2. The EPM was conducted 3 days after the last stress session. In the DS task, stress did not change the acquisition of reward-seeking behavior in the days in between stress sessions, and Stress and Control groups responded similarly to reward-seeking cues. However, stress did affect reward-seeking behavior in the long term, as the Stress group averaged less responses during the first extinction trial one month after stress, indicating a faster extinction response. In addition, the Stress group spent more time in the open arms of the EPM than the Control group, exhibiting a higher tendency towards risk-taking behavior. These results suggest that social stress does not produce effects in the reward system in the short term, but does produce changes in the long term.
Recommended Citation
Sullivan, Nikki, "Effects of repeated intermittent episodes of social stress on the acquisition and extinction of a reward-seeking task" (2020). Honors Theses. 1321.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1321
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.