Fear response throughout age and life history: behavioral characterization of the effects of adolescent stress on a fear conditioning paradigm in Wistar rats

COTELLA EVELIN; PAGLINI GABRIELA; HERMAN JAMES

Cincinnati

Workshop; Workshop: Neurobiology of Stress; 2014

The adolescent period is characterized by pronounced remodeling of the brain, which is required to achieve social and sexual maturity (Spear 2000). This period is known to be highly vulnerable to the effects of adverse environment and previous studies demonstrate that adolescent rat males hyper respond to chronic variable stress (CVS) (Jankord et al. 2011). In adults, CVS has been widely used but mainly focused in its immediate effects. Nevertheless, it has been recently shown that the sequelae associated with this type of stress may differ from the immediate ones (McGuire et al. 2010). Therefore, we hypothesized that adolescent chronic stress causes life-long impairment in the behavioral and physiological adaptations to stressful experiences