Section of Behavioural Neuroscience, Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, I-00161 Rome, Italy.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2012 Jun;37(6):762-72. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2011.09.007. Epub 2011 Oct 4.
Stress is a main risk factor that can trigger psychiatric disorders, including anxiety and major depression. Neurotrophins, such as Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), have been identified as neuroendocrine effectors involved in the response to stress and in the neurobehavioural changes associated with depression. Aim of this paper was to study the relationship between neuroendocrine activation (circulating corticosterone and brain BDNF levels) and a wide array of depression- and anxiety-like behaviours (anhedonia, behavioural despair, generalised and social anxiety) resulting from exposure to chronic stress. To this end, 3-month-old C57BL/6J male mice were exposed to either chronic disruption of the social structure (SS), to a stable social structure (SG) or to social deprivation (SD), a condition lacking social stimuli. Results show that, despite not developing anhedonia (decreased preference for a sucrose solution), SD mice were characterised by increased emotionality and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis reactivity in addition to reduced BDNF levels. By contrast, SG and SS mice showed increased anhedonia accompanied by no alterations in the behavioural and neuroendocrine profile. The results here reported indicate that mice exposed to different social housing conditions use different behavioural strategies to cope with external challenges. In addition they suggest that social deprivation might represent a stressful condition triggering the emergence of both anxiety- and depression-like behaviours and clearly indicate BDNF as a main neurobiological variable mediating these responses.
压力是一个主要的风险因素，可以引发精神疾病，包括焦虑症和重度抑郁症。神经营养因子，如脑源性神经营养因子（BDNF），已被确定为参与应激反应和与抑郁相关的神经行为变化的神经内分泌效应物。本文的目的是研究神经内分泌激活（循环皮质酮和大脑 BDNF 水平）与广泛的抑郁和焦虑样行为（快感缺失、行为绝望、广泛性和社交焦虑）之间的关系，这些行为是由慢性应激引起的。为此，3 个月大的 C57BL/6J 雄性小鼠被暴露于慢性社会结构破坏（SS）、稳定的社会结构（SG）或缺乏社会刺激的社会剥夺（SD）中。结果表明，尽管没有出现快感缺失（对蔗糖溶液的偏好降低），但 SD 小鼠的特点是情绪性增加和下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺轴反应增强，同时 BDNF 水平降低。相比之下，SG 和 SS 小鼠表现出增加的快感缺失，同时行为和神经内分泌特征没有改变。这里报道的结果表明，暴露于不同社会住房条件的小鼠使用不同的行为策略来应对外部挑战。此外，它们表明社会剥夺可能代表一种应激条件，引发焦虑和抑郁样行为的出现，并清楚地表明 BDNF 作为介导这些反应的主要神经生物学变量。
