Rats who lives with depressed ones drink more alcohol

COLOMBO M; RUIZ M; GENOVESE P; CALLIARI A; PAUTASSI R.M.; RUIZ P.

San Pablo

Congreso; 2022 Virtual Meeting of the Latinamerican Society of Biomedical Research on Alcoholism; 2022

Latinamerican Society of Biomedical Research on Alcoholism

An interesting phenomenon, emotional contagion, allows the transmission of emotionalstates and, along with this, of behavioral patterns from one individual to another. The aimof our work was to observe the influence of emotional contagion on alcohol consumption in euthymic rats that cohabitate with pharmacologically depressed peers. 40 femaleadolescent Wistar rats were used, which were divided into 5 boxes, designating one box as control. In the remaining 4 boxes, 6 animals were depressed using reserpine(amonoamine depletor) and the other two animals (socials), as well as the controls, wereonly administered physiological solution. Behavior tests (Open Field and Light/Dark Box) were performed on days 20, 40 and 60 of cohabitation in order to assess the existence ofemotional contagion. The test ́s results confirm emotional contagion effects. After a period of coexistence of 60 days, 8 sessions of alcohol consumption (5% ethanol) and 2 of water intake were carried out every 24 hours. The data obtained show that the socialanimals consumed significantly more alcohol than controls in sessions 4 and 7 (p