Item Details

title

EFFECTS OF EARLY SOCIAL ISOLATION AND ADOLESCENT SINGLE PROLONGED STRESS ON ANXIETY-LIKE BEHAVIORS AND ETHANOL SELF- ADMINISTRATION IN FEMALE RATS

author

Pitcairn, Stacy

abstract

Early life stress is a major risk factor for alcohol use disorder (AUD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with PTSD, but preclinical studies largely focus on males. Our lab has established a rodent social isolation (SI) model that engenders behaviors associated with heightened vulnerability to AUD and PTSD. However, these phenotypes only develop in male rats. Given that neural development is accelerated in females, we tested the hypothesis that there are sex differences in the developmental vulnerability window to SI. Female Long-Evans rats (n=16/gp) were either single-housed or group-housed for 1 week followed by behavioral testing. We next examined whether SI increased vulnerability to adolescent single prolonged stress (SPS), a rodent model of PTSD. Animals were then tested on a novelty-suppressed feeding (NSF) assay followed by fear conditioning and ethanol (EtOH) self-administration. Prior to SPS, SI engendered increased anxiety-like behavior across assays. There was a strong interaction between SI and SPS exposure during NSF with some group differences observed in fear conditioning. No group differences were seen with EtOH self-administration. These findings demonstrate that there may be significant differences in the vulnerability to early life stress, and multiple stressors may interact to exacerbate anxiety-like behaviors. These advances will be leveraged in future studies to better understand the neurobiological substrates underlying behaviors that develop following early life stress.

subject

alcohol use disorder

behavior

early life stress

post-traumatic stress disorder

rodent models

contributor

Weiner, Jeffrey L (committee chair)

Jones, Sara R (committee member)

McCool, Brian A (committee member)

date

2022-05-24T08:36:20Z (accessioned)

2022-11-23T09:30:11Z (available)

2022 (issued)

degree

Neuroscience (discipline)

embargo

2022-11-23 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/100785 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis