Dominance relationships in Syrian hamsters modulate neuroendocrine and behavioral responses to social stress.

ABSTRACT: Stress is a well-known risk factor for psychopathology and rodent models of social defeat have strong face, etiological, construct and predictive validity for these conditions. Syrian hamsters are highly aggressive and territorial, but after an acute social defeat experience they become submissive and no longer defend their home territory, even from a smaller, non-aggressive intruder. This defeat-induced change in social behavior is called conditioned defeat (CD). We have shown that dominant hamsters show increased neural activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) following social defeat stress and exhibit a reduced CD response at social interaction testing compared to subordinates. Although the vmPFC can inhibit the neuroendocrine stress response, it is unknown whether dominan

SUBMITTER: Dulka BN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6309596 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature