Institute of Psychology, Leiden University and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Department of Endocrinology and Metabolic Disease, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Behav Brain Res. 2019 May 17;364:1-10. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2019.02.005. Epub 2019 Feb 6.
The forced swim test (FST) for rodents does not model despair or helplessness. It also is not a read-out for depression, anxiety, psychomotor retardation or autism, because these are anthropomorphic interpretations of the rodent's acquired immobility. Rather, the transition from swimming to immobility allows to examine the mechanistic underpinning of coping with inescapable stressors. However, in a recent detailed analysis of the FST application over the past 40 years, we noted a dramatic surge in the use of this test to phenotype animals as 'depressed'. As a follow up to that report, we now present an analysis of the use of the FST over the past three years. This literature analysis shows that the popularity of the FST is still increasing and that the majority of researchers qualifies the rodent's floating response as depressive-like behavior. However, over the past few years we also note a trend to interpret immobility rather as the expression of a coping strategy. In view of this result, we have sent a poll to the relevant authors to learn how consistent they are in naming FST behavior. Remarkably, we find a dramatic inverse correlation between their first qualification of acquired immobility as depressive-like behavior towards their current interpretation as coping strategy. In this contribution we have embedded our literature analysis and poll results in an update on the management of coping with inescapable stressors by processing in prefrontal cortical circuitry and glucocorticoid feedback.
强迫游泳测试（FST）不适用于啮齿动物的绝望或无助情绪模型。它也不能用于检测抑郁、焦虑、精神运动迟缓或自闭症，因为这些都是对啮齿动物习得性不动的拟人化解释。相反，从游泳到不动的转变可以用来研究应对不可避免压力源的机制基础。然而，在最近对过去 40 年来 FST 应用的详细分析中，我们注意到该测试被大量用于将动物表型为“抑郁”。作为对该报告的后续，我们现在分析了过去三年来 FST 的使用情况。这项文献分析表明，FST 的流行程度仍在增加，大多数研究人员将啮齿动物的漂浮反应定性为类似抑郁的行为。然而，在过去几年中，我们还注意到一种将不动性解释为应对策略的趋势。鉴于这一结果，我们向相关作者发送了一份民意调查，以了解他们在命名 FST 行为方面的一致性如何。值得注意的是，我们发现他们将习得性不动性最初定性为类似抑郁的行为与当前解释为应对策略之间存在显著的反向相关性。在这篇文章中，我们将文献分析和民意调查结果嵌入到对前额叶皮质电路和糖皮质激素反馈处理不可避免压力源的应对管理的更新中。
