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Excited to see latest research from @BagotLab led by @jessie_muir with Yiu Chung Tse @esiyer et al. online https://preview.tinyurl.com/ycm6pmav 1/8
Previously, we identified a key role for ventral hippocampal projections to nucleus accumbens in regulating stress-induced susceptibility https://preview.tinyurl.com/ycfzvalg
AFTER stress (in male mice) 2/8
AFTER stress (in male mice) 2/8
A big question is what makes some individuals more vulnerable to stress (i.e. why do some become resilient & others susceptible)? Looking AFTER stress, we can’t differentiate between changes CAUSED by stress (‘scars’) & pre-existing diffs encoding underlying vulnerability 3/8
We also wanted to know if the same vHIP-NAc (side-note for the haters- ‘Nack’ all the way) mechanisms mediate susceptibility in F and M so we examined BOTH sexes using sex-specific stress protocols to examine neural activity under similar levels of behavioural susceptibility 4/8
@jessie_muir probed neural activity in vHIP-NAc BEFORE & AFTER stress in range of behaviours. TLDR vHIP-NAc activity BEFORE stress predicts stress-induced anxiety-like behaviour and social-avoidance but not passive-coping ( interesting behavioural specificity…) in BOTH sexes 5/8
Stress also increased activity in these neurons in vivo, and ex vivo analysis suggests this is likely because of altered activity upstream of the vHIP 6/8
Our finding of similar mechanisms in males and females is especially interesting since @RobisonLabMSU recently showed sex-differences in the vHIP-NAc pathway contribute to the well-known increased stress-susceptibility of females https://preview.tinyurl.com/y8veyh8h 7/8
So, we now know that vHIP-NAc is important in defining individual diffs in susceptibility to future stress, & that sufficient stress further shapes neural activity in BOTH sexes, & that this pathway also contributes to the heightened stress-susceptibility of females 8/8 #SABV
