Brief Social Isolation in the Adolescent Wistar-Kyoto Rat Model of Endogenous Depression Alters Corticosterone and Regional Monoamine Concentrations.

Brief Social Isolation in the Adolescent Wistar-Kyoto Rat Model of Endogenous Depression Alters Corticosterone and Regional Monoamine Concentrations. Neurochem Res. 2017 Feb 24;: Authors: Shetty RA, Sadananda M Abstract The Wistar-Kyoto rat (WKY) model has been suggested as a model of adult and adolescent depression though face, predictive and construct validities of the model to depression remain equivocal. The suitability of the WKY as a diathesis model that tests the double-hit hypothesis, particularly during critical periods of brain and behavioural development remains to be established. Here, effects of post-weaning social isolation were assessed during early adolescence (~30pnd) on behavioural despair and learned helplessness in the forced swim test (FST), plasma corticosterone levels and tissue monoamine concentrations in brain areas critically involved in depression, such as prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, striatum and hippocampus. Significantly increased immobility in the FST was observed in socially-isolated, adolescent WKY with a concomitant increase in corticosterone levels over and above the FST-induced stress. WKY also demonstrated a significantly increased release and utilization of dopamine, as manifested by levels of metabolites 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid and homovanillic acid in nucleus accumbens, indicating that the large dopamine storage pool evident during adolescence induces greater dopamine release wh...
Source: Neurochemical Research - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Neurochem Res Source Type: research