Faraji Mojdeh, Viera-Resto Omar A, Berrios Brenden J, Bizon Jennifer L, Setlow Barry
Department of Psychiatry, University of Florida.
Center for Addiction Research and Education, University of Florida.
bioRxiv. 2024 May 14:2024.05.13.593981. doi: 10.1101/2024.05.13.593981.
The neuropeptide oxytocin is traditionally known for its roles in parturition, lactation, and social behavior. Other data, however, show that oxytocin can modulate behaviors outside of these contexts, including drug self-administration and some aspects of cost-benefit decision making. Here we used a pharmacological approach to investigate the contributions of oxytocin signaling to decision making under risk of explicit punishment. Female and male Long-Evans rats were trained on a risky decision-making task in which they chose between a small, "safe" food reward and a large, "risky" food reward that was accompanied by varying probabilities of mild footshock. Once stable choice behavior emerged, rats were tested in the task following acute intraperitoneal injections of oxytocin or the oxytocin receptor antagonist L-368,899. Neither drug affected task performance in males. In females, however, both oxytocin and L-368,899 caused a dose-dependent reduction in preference for large risky reward. Control experiments showed that these effects could not be accounted for by alterations in food motivation or shock sensitivity. Together, these results reveal a sex-dependent effect of oxytocin signaling on risky decision making in rats.
神经肽催产素传统上以其在分娩、泌乳和社会行为中的作用而闻名。然而，其他数据表明，催产素可以调节这些情境之外的行为，包括药物自我给药和成本效益决策的某些方面。在这里，我们采用药理学方法来研究催产素信号传导在明确惩罚风险下对决策的贡献。对雌性和雄性朗-埃文斯大鼠进行一项风险决策任务训练，在该任务中，它们要在小的“安全”食物奖励和大的“风险”食物奖励之间做出选择，大的食物奖励伴随着不同概率的轻度足部电击。一旦出现稳定的选择行为，在大鼠腹腔注射催产素或催产素受体拮抗剂L-368,899后，对其进行该任务测试。两种药物对雄性大鼠的任务表现均无影响。然而，在雌性大鼠中，催产素和L-368,899均导致对大的风险奖励的偏好呈剂量依赖性降低。对照实验表明，这些效应不能用食物动机或电击敏感性的改变来解释。这些结果共同揭示了催产素信号传导对大鼠风险决策的性别依赖性影响。
