Environmental Determinants of Behavioural Responses to Short-Term Stress in Rats: Evidence for Inhibitory Effect of Ambient Landmarks.

Environmental Determinants of Behavioural Responses to Short-Term Stress in Rats: Evidence for Inhibitory Effect of Ambient Landmarks. Behav Brain Res. 2019 Oct 31;:112332 Authors: Faraji J, Singh S, Soltanpour N, Sutherland RJ, Metz GAS Abstract Behavioural responses to stress occur in an environment-dependent manner. Complex environments require flexible behavioural coping strategies and chronic stress usually generates psychomotor inhibition. Here, we examine if short-term stress also exerts an inhibitory effect on novelty-seeking, exploratory behaviours. Rats underwent acute restraint stress or were left undisturbed, and their neuroendocrine and behavioural responses were assessed at short- and long-term time points. Animals were individually tested in the open field task (OFT) and the corridor field task (CFT) with and without a central object for free exploration and novelty seeking behaviour. Stress-related psychomotor alterations were measured by path speed, path length, number of stops and thigmotaxis in both tasks. Short-term stress activated the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis causing elevated plasma corticosterone levels. Stress also impacted psychomotor functions in terms of motivational changes (higher speed and longer path) only in the central-object variations of the OFT and CFT. Moreover, stress-induced emotional alterations were manifested by higher number of stops and thigmotactic behaviour only in the central-...
Source: Behavioural Brain Research - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Behav Brain Res Source Type: research