Zambetti Peter R, Schuessler Bryan P, Kim Jeansok J
Department of Psychology, Guthrie Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Department of Psychology, Guthrie Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; Program in Neuroscience, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
iScience. 2019 Jun 28;16:442-452. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2019.06.011. Epub 2019 Jun 11.
Rodents in the wild are under nearly constant threat of aerial predation and thus have evolved adaptive innate defensive behaviors, such as freezing or fleeing, in response to a perceived looming threat. Here we employed an ethologically relevant paradigm to study innate fear of aerial predators in male and female rats during a goal-oriented task. Rats foraging for food in a large arena encountered either a 2D or 3D looming stimulus, to which they instinctively fled back to a safe nest. When facing a direct aerial threat, female rats exhibited a greater fear response than males and this divergence maintained when exposed to the environment on subsequent days with no predator interaction, suggesting stronger contextual fear in female rats. These results may have relevance toward exploring neurobiological mechanisms associated with higher diagnosis rates of fear and anxiety-related disorders in women as compared with men.
野生啮齿动物几乎一直面临空中捕食的威胁，因此进化出了适应性的先天防御行为，比如在感知到迫近的威胁时静止不动或逃跑。在此，我们采用了一种与行为学相关的范式，来研究雄性和雌性大鼠在一项目标导向任务中对空中捕食者的先天恐惧。在一个大场地中觅食的大鼠遇到二维或三维迫近刺激时，会本能地逃回安全的巢穴。面对直接的空中威胁时，雌性大鼠比雄性大鼠表现出更强烈的恐惧反应，并且在随后几天没有与捕食者互动的情况下暴露于该环境时，这种差异依然存在，这表明雌性大鼠的情境性恐惧更强。这些结果可能与探索女性与男性相比恐惧和焦虑相关障碍诊断率更高的神经生物学机制有关。
