Salazar Melissa G, Nguyen Christine H, Oak Sasha, Jackson Jeffy, Rincón-Cortés Millie
Department of Neuroscience, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, United States.
Front Behav Neurosci. 2025 Sep 1;19:1659339. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1659339. eCollection 2025.
Early life adversity (ELA) increases risk for multiple psychiatric disorders that are characterized by reward-related dysfunction. Disrupted reward-related processes are commonly observed in humans and rodents following ELA. Rodent studies have shown sex differences in response to natural and drug rewards at baseline, following ELA, and in rodent models of psychiatric diseases that are potentiated by ELA. Yet, less is known regarding the development of ELA-induced alterations in reward-related responses, including how these may differ by sex. To this end, we tested behavioral responses to consummatory and social rewards in control and scarcity-adversity male and female rats using sucrose preference, palatable food consumption, and social play tests during peripuberty and adolescence. Our results suggest no impact of early life scarcity-adversity during peripuberty, but sex- and reward-dependent adolescent effects in which females display reduced sucrose preference whereas males display lower levels of social play solicitations (i.e., dorsal contacts). These findings suggest age-, sex-, and reward-specific effects of early life scarcity-adversity in response to consummatory and social rewards, which appear to emerge during adolescence.
早年逆境（ELA）会增加多种以奖赏相关功能障碍为特征的精神疾病的风险。在人类和啮齿动物经历ELA后，通常会观察到奖赏相关过程受到干扰。啮齿动物研究表明，在基线、经历ELA后以及在因ELA而加剧的精神疾病啮齿动物模型中，对自然奖赏和药物奖赏的反应存在性别差异。然而，对于ELA引起的奖赏相关反应改变的发展，包括这些改变如何因性别而异，我们了解得较少。为此，我们在青春期前和青春期使用蔗糖偏好、美味食物消耗和社交游戏测试，测试了对照和经历稀缺逆境的雄性和雌性大鼠对 consummatory 奖赏和社交奖赏的行为反应。我们的结果表明，青春期前的早年稀缺逆境没有影响，但存在性别和奖赏依赖性的青春期效应，其中雌性表现出蔗糖偏好降低，而雄性表现出较低水平的社交游戏请求（即背部接触）。这些发现表明，早年稀缺逆境对 consummatory 奖赏和社交奖赏的反应存在年龄、性别和奖赏特异性效应，这些效应似乎在青春期出现。
