While stressful life events are an important cause of psychopathology, most individuals exposed to adversity maintain normal psychological functioning. The molecular mechanisms underlying such resilience are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that an inbred population of mice subjected to social defeat can be separated into susceptible and unsusceptible subpopulations that differ along several behavioral and physiological domains. By a combination of molecular and electrophysiological techniques, we identify signature adaptations within the mesolimbic dopamine circuit that are uniquely associated with vulnerability or insusceptibility. We show that molecular recapitulations of three prototypical adaptations associated with the unsusceptible phenotype are each sufficient to promote resistant behavior. Our results validate a multidisciplinary approach to examine the neurobiological mechanisms of variations in stress resistance, and illustrate the importance of plasticity within the brain's reward circuits in actively maintaining an emotional homeostasis.

Here, we characterized behavioral abnormalities induced by prolonged social isolation in adult rodents. Social isolation induced both anxiety-and anhedonia-like symptoms and decreased cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) activity in the nucleus accumbens shell (NAcSh). All of these abnormalities were reversed by chronic, but not acute, antidepressant treatment. However, although the anxiety phenotype and its reversal by antidepressant treatment were CREB-dependent, the anhedonia-like symptoms were not mediated by CREB in NAcSh. We found that decreased CREB activity in NAcSh correlated with increased expression of certain K + channels and reduced electrical excitability of NAcSh neurons, which was sufficient to induce anxiety-like behaviors and was reversed by chronic antidepressant treatment. Together, our results describe a model that distinguishes anxiety-and depression-like behavioral phenotypes, establish a selective role of NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript decreased CREB activity in NAcSh in anxiety-like behavior, and provide a mechanism by which antidepressant treatment alleviates anxiety symptoms after social isolation.Depression and anxiety are common forms of mental illness in the general population. Although they are classified as distinct syndromes by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (American Psychiatric Association), symptoms of depression and anxiety often occur together and to widely varying extents in different subtypes of the illnesses. Despite the importance of these clinical phenomena, very little is known about the distinctions between depression-and anxiety-like symptoms in animal models 1 . Models of 'active' stress, such as foot shock, restraint stress, social defeat and learned helplessness, produce depression-and anxiety-like phenotypes; the molecular mechanisms of these models have been extensively studied, but specific molecular mediators of depression versus anxiety symptoms have not yet been described [2][3][4] . Even less well studied, however, is a 'passive' model of stress and social isolation in adulthood, which, as with active stress, mimics aspects of human depression and anxiety 5,6 . This lack of attention is unfortunate, as social isolation would appear to be particularly relevant to certain subtypes of human depression and anxiety disorders 7,8 .Although social isolation has been studied, most models to date have focused on adulthood behaviors after isolation rearing early in life, either as pups or adolescents, which is a very different model than adulthood social isolation 5 . Reports on adulthood isolation provide evidence for a strong anxiety-like phenotype 9,10 , an increase in alcohol intake 11 , modulation of responses to rewarding stimuli 9,10,12 , changes in circadian rhythms 13 and a dampening in running-induced neurogenesis 14 . Although reports on changes in neurochemistry are often conflicting, there appears to be decreased serotonergic and noradrenergic function and metabolism in several brain regi...

Although chronic cocaine-induced changes in dendritic spines on nucleus accumbens (NAc) neurons have been correlated with behavioral sensitization, the molecular pathways governing these structural changes, and their resulting behavioral effects, are poorly understood. The transcription factor, nuclear factor B (NFB), is rapidly activated by diverse stimuli and regulates expression of many genes known to maintain cell structure. Therefore, we evaluated the role of NFB in regulating cocaine-induced dendritic spine changes on medium spiny neurons of the NAc and the rewarding effects of cocaine. We show that chronic cocaine induces NFB-dependent transcription in the NAc of NFB-Lac transgenic mice. This induction of NFB activity is accompanied by increased expression of several NFB genes, the promoters of which show chromatin modifications after chronic cocaine exposure consistent with their transcriptional activation. To study the functional significance of this induction, we used viral-mediated gene transfer to express either a constitutively active or dominant-negative mutant of Inhibitor of B kinase (IKKca or IKKdn), which normally activates NFB signaling, in the NAc. We found that activation of NFB by IKKca increases the number of dendritic spines on NAc neurons, whereas inhibition of NFB by IKKdn decreases basal dendritic spine number and blocks the increase in dendritic spines after chronic cocaine. Moreover, inhibition of NFB blocks the rewarding effects of cocaine and the ability of previous cocaine exposure to increase an animal's preference for cocaine. Together, these studies establish a direct role for NFB pathways in the NAc to regulate structural and behavioral plasticity to cocaine.

Background-Previous research has shown that rats reared in an enriched condition (EC) are more sensitive to the acute effects of amphetamine than rats reared in an isolated condition (IC); yet, EC rats self-administer less amphetamine than IC rats. The present study used cocaine to further explore this environmental enrichment behavioral phenotype, as well as the underlying molecular mechanisms involved.

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