Environmental enrichment as an experimental paradigm to promote stress inoculation-induced resilience
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1
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Spain
Environmental enrichment (EE) is an experimental setting in which the animals are housed in conditions that potentiate social interactions and sensory and motor stimulation. It is a condition which exposes the animal to constant mild stressors (physical environment changes and enhanced social interactions). Therefore, it could be viewed as an experimental paradigm to promote stress inoculation-induced resilience or “stress immunization”. Indeed, animals housed in an enriched environment show an attenuation of the behavioural and endocrine responses evoked by acute psychogenic stressors. We have reported that the increases in the concentrations of dopamine and acetylcholine, and also corticosterone, in the prefrontal cortex in response to a moderate stressor are reduced by housing the animals in an enriched environment. These results suggest that EE reduces the reactivity to stress of the dopaminergic and cholinergic systems of the prefrontal cortex, an area involved in the regulation of the response to stress. Behaviourally, enriched animals show a faster habituation to a novel environment than control animals. We have also shown that the disruptive effects of acute stress on working memory performance (a cognitive function dependent on the integrity of the prefrontal cortex) tend to be attenuated in animals housed in enriched conditions. Moreover, enriched animals show a reduced memory of aversive events in the passive avoidance paradigm. We have recently proposed that these findings may be interpreted as enriched rats coping better with stressful situations. We have further hypothesized that the activation of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex is involved in this effect of EE. Understanding the effects of EE on the responses to stressors and its putative neurobiological mechanisms would help to develop new tools for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Keywords:
environmental enrichment,
resilience,
Dopamine,
Prefrontal Cortex,
working memory,
acute stress,
Acetylcholine,
passive avoidance
Conference:
4th Conference of the Mediterrarnean Neuroscience Society, Istanbul, Türkiye, 30 Sep - 3 Oct, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Symposium
Topic:
Abstracts
Citation:
Segovia
G
(2013). Environmental enrichment as an experimental paradigm to promote stress inoculation-induced resilience.
Conference Abstract:
4th Conference of the Mediterrarnean Neuroscience Society.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2013.210.00066
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Received:
04 Feb 2013;
Published Online:
11 Apr 2013.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Gregorio Segovia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Madrid, 28040, Spain, segoviag@med.ucm.es