Treadway Michael T, Betters Samantha A, Cooper Jessica A, Li Chun-Xia, Zhang Xiaodong, Michopoulos Vasiliki
Department of Psychology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Transl Psychiatry. 2025 Mar 29;15(1):107. doi: 10.1038/s41398-025-03334-2.
Chronic psychosocial stress is associated with increased risk of psychiatric disorders. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in humans has been used to show that glutamate levels in medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) following acute stress exposure adapt to recent chronic stress levels. Here, we sought to determine the presence of this glutamate stress response adaptation in rhesus macaques, whose societies are maintained by dominance relationships that are enforced by agonistic interactions and result in chronic stress phenotypes seen in humans. We tested the hypothesis that change in mPFC glutamate after an acute stressor would be moderated by behavioral factors related to social subordination in a manner similar to that previously observed in humans. Seventeen adult female rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta, 13-23 yrs.) were observed over ten weeks to collect behavioral data and then received two MRS scans. The first scan occurred after acute stress manipulation involving relocation and isolation. The second control scan occurred after acclimation to the new location. As expected, we found that a behavioral measure of social subordination predicted an adaptive glutamate response such that animals experiencing more submissive behavior asymmetry (a behavioral measure related to social subordination) exhibited an attenuated glutamate response to the acute stressor. These data establish the use of MRS to measure the adaptive glutamate stress in non-human primates and will help further our understanding of the neurobiology of stress adaptation.
慢性心理社会应激与精神疾病风险增加有关。人体磁共振波谱（MRS）已被用于表明，急性应激暴露后内侧前额叶皮质（mPFC）中的谷氨酸水平会适应近期的慢性应激水平。在此，我们试图确定恒河猴中这种谷氨酸应激反应适应性的存在，恒河猴的社会由支配关系维持，这种关系通过争斗性互动来强化，并导致出现人类中所见的慢性应激表型。我们检验了这样一个假设，即急性应激源后mPFC谷氨酸的变化会受到与社会从属相关的行为因素的调节，其方式类似于先前在人类中观察到的情况。在十周内观察了17只成年雌性恒河猴（猕猴，13 - 23岁）以收集行为数据，然后对它们进行了两次MRS扫描。第一次扫描在涉及重新安置和隔离的急性应激操作后进行。第二次对照扫描在适应新位置后进行。正如预期的那样，我们发现社会从属的行为指标预测了一种适应性谷氨酸反应，即经历更多顺从行为不对称（一种与社会从属相关的行为指标）的动物对急性应激源的谷氨酸反应减弱。这些数据确立了使用MRS来测量非人类灵长类动物中的适应性谷氨酸应激，并将有助于进一步加深我们对应激适应神经生物学的理解。
