scholarly journals Chronic corticosterone administration induces negative valence and impairs positive valence behaviors in mice

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dieterich ◽  
Prachi Srivastava ◽  
Aitesam Sharif ◽  
Karina Stech ◽  
Benjamin A. Samuels

AbstractBehavioral approaches utilizing rodents to study mood disorders have focused primarily on negative valence behaviors associated with potential threat (anxiety). However, for disorders such as depression, positive valence behaviors that assess reward processing may be more translationally-valid and predictive of antidepressant treatment outcome. Chronic corticosterone (CORT) administration is a well-validated pharmacological stressor that increases negative valence behaviors (David et al., 2009; Gourley et al., 2008a,b; Gourley et al., 2012; Olausson et al., 2013). However, whether chronic stress paradigms such as CORT administration also lead to deficits in positive valence behaviors remains unclear. We treated male C57BL/6J mice with chronic CORT and assessed both negative and positive valence behaviors. We found that CORT induced negative valence behaviors associated with anxiety in the open field and NSF. Interestingly, CORT also impaired instrumental acquisition, reduced sensitivity to a devalued outcome, reduced breakpoint in progressive ratio, and impaired performance in probabilistic reversal learning. Taken together, these results demonstrate that chronic CORT administration at the same dosage both induces negative valence behaviors associated with anxiety and impairs positive valence behaviors associated with reward processing. These data suggest that CORT administration is a useful experimental system for preclinical approaches to studying stress-induced mood disorders.Significance StatementChronic exposure to stress can precipitate mood disorders such as anxiety and depression. However, most studies focus on the effects of chronic stress on increasing negative affect behaviors. Elucidating how chronic stress impacts translationally-valid positive valence behaviors is less studied. Here, we show that chronic pharmacological stress induces negative affect behaviors associates with anxiety and impairs reward-related, positive valence behaviors in mice.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dieterich ◽  
Prachi Srivastava ◽  
Aitesam Sharif ◽  
Karina Stech ◽  
Joseph Floeder ◽  
...  

AbstractBehavioral approaches utilizing rodents to study mood disorders have focused primarily on negative valence behaviors associated with potential threat (anxiety-related behaviors). However, for disorders such as depression, positive valence behaviors that assess reward processing may be more translationally valid and predictive of antidepressant treatment outcome. Chronic corticosterone (CORT) administration is a well-validated pharmacological stressor that increases avoidance in negative valence behaviors associated with anxiety1–4. However, whether chronic stress paradigms such as CORT administration also lead to deficits in positive valence behaviors remains unclear. We treated male C57BL/6J mice with chronic CORT and assessed both negative and positive valence behaviors. We found that CORT induced avoidance in the open field and NSF. Interestingly, CORT also impaired instrumental acquisition, reduced sensitivity to a devalued outcome, reduced breakpoint in progressive ratio, and impaired performance in probabilistic reversal learning. Taken together, these results demonstrate that chronic CORT administration at the same dosage both induces avoidance in negative valence behaviors associated with anxiety and impairs positive valence behaviors associated with reward processing. These data suggest that CORT administration is a useful experimental system for preclinical approaches to studying stress-induced mood disorders.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine N. Yohn ◽  
Sandra A. Ashamalla ◽  
Leshya Bokka ◽  
Mark M. Gergues ◽  
Alexander Garino ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTDespite stress-associated disorders having a higher incidence rate in females, preclinical research mainly focuses on males. Chronic stress paradigms, such as chronic social defeat and chronic corticosterone administration, were mainly designed and validated in males and subsequent attempts to use these paradigms in females has demonstrated sex differences in the behavioral and HPA axis response to stress. Here, we developed a social stress paradigm, social instability stress (SIS), which exposes adult mice to unstable social hierarchies for 7 weeks. SIS effectively induces negative valence behaviors and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activation in both males and females. Importantly, while there were effects of estrous cycle on behavior, this variability did not impact the overall effects of SIS on behavior, suggesting estrous does not need to be tracked while utilizing SIS. Furthermore, the effects of SIS on negative valence behaviors were also reversed following chronic antidepressant treatment with fluoxetine (FLX) in both males and females. SIS also reduced adult hippocampal neurogenesis in female mice, while chronic FLX treatment increased adult hippocampal neurogenesis in both males and females. Overall, these data demonstrate that the SIS paradigm is an ethologically valid approach that effectively induces chronic stress in both adult male and adult female mice.


Author(s):  
Alexis E. Whitton ◽  
Michael T. Treadway ◽  
Manon L. Ironside ◽  
Diego A. Pizzagalli

This chapter provides a critical review of recent behavioral and neuroimaging evidence of reward processing abnormalities in mood disorders. The primary focus is on the neural mechanisms underlying disruption in approach motivation, reward learning, and reward-based decision-making in major depression and bipolar disorder. Efforts focused on understanding how reward-related impairments contribute to psychiatric symptomatology have grown substantially in recent years. This has been driven by significant advances in the understanding of the neurobiology of reward processing and a growing recognition that disturbances in motivation and hedonic capacity are poorly targeted by current pharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions. As a result, numerous studies have sought to test the presence of reward circuit dysfunction in psychiatric disorders that are marked by anhedonia, amotivation, mania, and impulsivity. Moreover, as the field has increasingly eschewed categorical diagnostic boundaries in favor of symptom dimensions, there has been a parallel rise in studies seeking to identify transdiagnostic neural markers of reward processing dysfunction that may transcend disorders. The thesis of this chapter is twofold: First, evidence indicates that specific subcomponents of reward processing map onto partially distinct neurobiological pathways. Second, specific subcomponents of reward processing, including reward learning and effort-based decision-making, are impaired across different mood disorder diagnoses and may point to dimensions in symptom presentation that possess more reliable behavioral and neural correlates. The potential for these findings to inform the development of prevention and treatment strategies is discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dieterich ◽  
Tonia Liu ◽  
Benjamin Adam Samuels

AbstractReward and motivation deficits are prominent symptoms in many mood disorders, including depression. Similar reward and effort-related choice behavioral tasks can be used to study aspects of motivation in both rodents and humans. Chronic stress can precipitate mood disorders in humans and maladaptive reward and motivation behaviors in male rodents. However, while depression is more prevalent in women, there is relatively little known about whether chronic stress elicits maladaptive behaviors in female rodents in effort-related motivated tasks and whether there are any behavioral sex differences. Chronic nondiscriminatory social defeat stress (CNSDS) is a variation of chronic social defeat stress that is effective in both male and female mice. We hypothesized that CNSDS would reduce effort-related motivated and reward behaviors, including reducing sensitivity to a devalued outcome, reducing breakpoint in progressive ratio, and shifting effort-related choice behavior. Separate cohorts of adult male and female C57BL/6 J mice were divided into Control or CNSDS groups, exposed to the 10-day CNSDS paradigm, and then trained and tested in instrumental reward or effort-related behaviors. CNSDS reduced motivation to lever press in progressive ratio and shifted effort-related choice behavior from a high reward to a more easily attainable low reward in both sexes. CNSDS caused more nuanced impairments in outcome devaluation. Taken together, CNSDS induces maladaptive shifts in effort-related choice and reduces motivated lever pressing in both sexes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110215
Author(s):  
Erick G. Chuquichambi Apaza ◽  
Guido B. Corradi ◽  
Enric Munar ◽  
Jaume Rosselló-Mir

Symmetry and contour take part in shaping visual preference. However, less is known about their combined contribution to preference. We examined the hedonic tone and preference triggered by the interaction of symmetry and contour. Symmetric/curved, symmetric/sharp-angled, asymmetric/curved, and asymmetric/sharp-angled stimuli were presented in an implicit and explicit task. The implicit task consisted of an affective stimulus-response compatibility task where participants matched the stimuli with positive and negative valence response cues. The explicit task recorded liking ratings from the same stimuli. We used instructed mindset to induce participants to focus on symmetry or contour in different parts of the experimental session. We found an implicit compatibility of symmetry and curvature with positive hedonic tone. Explicit results showed preference for symmetry and curvature. In both tasks, symmetry and curvature showed a cumulative interaction, with a larger contribution of symmetry to the overall effect. While symmetric and asymmetric stimuli contributed to the implicit positive valence of symmetry, the effect of curvature was mainly caused by inclination toward curved contours rather than rejection of sharp-angled contours. We did not find any correlation between implicit and explicit measures, suggesting that they may involve different cognitive processing.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182199000
Author(s):  
Pilar Ferré ◽  
Juan Haro ◽  
Daniel Huete-Pérez ◽  
Isabel Fraga

There is substantial evidence that affectively charged words (e.g., party or gun) are processed differently from neutral words (e.g., pen), although there are also inconsistent findings in the field. Some lexical or semantic variables might explain such inconsistencies, due to the possible modulation of affective word processing by these variables. The aim of the present study was to examine the extent to which affective word processing is modulated by semantic ambiguity. We conducted a large lexical decision study including semantically ambiguous words (e.g., cataract) and semantically unambiguous words (e.g., terrorism), analysing the extent to which reaction times (RTs) were influenced by their affective properties. The findings revealed a valence effect in which positive valence made RTs faster, whereas negative valence slowed them. The valence effect diminished as the semantic ambiguity of words increased. This decrease did not affect all ambiguous words, but was observed mainly in ambiguous words with incongruent affective meanings. These results highlight the need to consider the affective properties of the distinct meanings of ambiguous words in research on affective word processing.


Psihologija ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-133
Author(s):  
Petar Colovic ◽  
Jasmina Kodzopeljic ◽  
Dusanka Mitrovic ◽  
Bojana Dinic ◽  
Snezana Smederevac

The aim of this study is to examine the relations between roles in violent interactions and personality traits (congruent to dimensions of Big Seven lexical model), number of friends, and gender. The study was conducted on a sample of 1095 elementary school students from Serbia (51.4% female), aged 11-14. The results revealed that membership in the victims group corresponds to smaller number of friends, low Extraversion, high Neuroticism and Conscientiousness and male gender, while higher Aggressiveness, Negative and Positive Valence, lower Neuroticism, and male gender increase the odds of membership in the bullies group. The role of bully-victims corresponds to smaller number of friends, higher Negative Valence and Neuroticism, and male gender. The results point to differences between roles in violent interaction with regard to patterns of personality traits and social behavior.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erick Gustavo Chuquichambi ◽  
Guido Corradi ◽  
Jaume Rossello ◽  
Enric Munar

Symmetry and contour take part in shaping visual preference. However, less is known about their combined contribution to preference. We examined the hedonic tone and preference triggered by the interaction of symmetry and contour. Symmetric/curved, symmetric/sharp-angled, asymmetric/curved, and asymmetric/sharp-angled stimuli were presented in an implicit and explicit task. The implicit task consisted of an affective stimulus-response compatibility task where participants matched the stimuli with positive and negative valence response cues. The explicit task recorded liking ratings from the same stimuli. We used instructed mindset to induce participants to focus on symmetry or contour in different parts of the experimental session. We found an implicit compatibility of symmetry and curvature with positive hedonic tone. Explicit results showed preference for symmetry and curvature. In both tasks, symmetry and curvature showed a cumulative interaction, with a larger contribution of symmetry to the overall effect. While symmetric and asymmetric stimuli contributed to the implicit positive valence of symmetry, the effect of curvature was mainly caused by inclination toward curved contours rather than rejection of sharp-angled contours. We did not find any correlation between implicit and explicit measures, suggesting that they may involve different cognitive processing.


2020 ◽  
Vol 293 ◽  
pp. 113337
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Emens ◽  
Alec M. Berman ◽  
Saurabh S. Thosar ◽  
Matthew P. Butler ◽  
Sally A. Roberts ◽  
...  

1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 13-18
Author(s):  
June Kean

The effects of eight teachers’ ethnotheories (beliefs and values) were examined in relation to interactions in the classroom (teachers, target children) with two broad groupings of child temperament (Difficult Temperament N = 16, Easy Temperament N = 16) which were established on the basis of teachers’ ratings of child temperament using The Preschool Inventory (Billman, 1981). Temperament (individual behavioural style) was conceptualised as the manifestation of affective displays and social behaviours in context, with emotions acting as signals for interactions. Interviews were conducted with the teachers to elicit their beliefs and values, their expectations for children, and to establish their tolerance levels for the more difficult child behaviours. Sixty-four hours of classroom observations were conducted. A pattern of different positive and negative interactions emerged between the more difficult temperament group (Difficult Temperament), and those with relatively easy temperaments (Easy Temperament). Difficult Temperament children consistently gave and received from teachers more negative-valence in emotional and social behaviours, than the Easy Temperament children. Easy Temperament children displayed and were responded to with more positive-valence in emotional and social behaviours. Evidence was found for the impact of teacher tolerance levels and expectations on classroom interactions. These findings suggested that early childhood teachers need to give careful consideration to their beliefs and values in developing more effective teaching techniques for children with differing temperaments.


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