Sex-dependent effects of early life stress on reinforcement learning and limbic cortico-striatal functional connectivity.

ABSTRACT: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a stress-related condition hypothesized to involve aberrant reinforcement learning (RL) with positive and negative stimuli. The present study investigated whether repeated early maternal separation (REMS) stress, a procedure widely recognized to cause depression-like behaviour, affects how subjects learn from positive and negative feedback. The REMS procedure was implemented by separating male and female rats from their dam for 6 h each day from post-natal day 5-19. Control rat offspring were left undisturbed during this period. Rats were tested as adults for behavioral flexibility and feedback sensitivity on a probabilistic reversal learning task. A computational approach based on RL theory was used to derive latent behavioral variables related to reward

SUBMITTER: Zuhlsdorff K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9731893 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature