Chronic exposure to glucocorticoids induces suboptimal decision-making in mice.
AbstractAnxio-depressive symptoms as well as severe cognitive dysfunction including aberrant decision-making (DM) are documented in neuropsychiatric patients with hypercortisolaemia. Yet, the influence of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis on DM processes remains poorly understood. As a tractable mean to approach this human condition, adult male C57BL/6JRj mice were chronically treated with corticosterone (CORT) prior to behavioural, physiological and neurobiological evaluation. The behavioural data indicate that chronic CORT delays the acquisition of contingencies required to orient responding towards optimal DM performance in a mouse Gambling Task (mGT). Specifically, CORT-treat…
Chronic Distress in Male Mice Impairs Motivation Compromising Both Effort and Reward Processing With Altered Anterior Insular Cortex and Basolateral Amygdala Neural Activation.
AbstractIn humans and mammals, effort-based decision-making for monetary or food rewards paradigms contribute to the study of adaptive goal-directed behaviours acquired through reinforcement learning. Chronic distress modelled by repeated exposure to glucocorticoids in rodents induces suboptimal decision-making under uncertainty by impinging on instrumental acquisition and prompting negative valence behaviours. In order to further disentangle the motivational tenets of adaptive decision-making, this study addressed the consequences of enduring distress on relevant effort and reward processing dimensions. Experimentally, appetitive and consummatory components of motivation were evaluated in …
A basal ganglia-like cortical-amygdalar-hypothalamic network mediates feeding behavior.
International audience; The network connecting the insular cortex, the central nucleus of the amygdala, and a caudal hypothalamic nuclear complex including the parasubthalamic nucleus (PSTN) is of interest due to its role in controlling feeding behavior. Here, we show that the organization of this network is similar to that of the basal ganglia network, implying that both fit within a simplified structural plan of the forebrain. Then, we demonstrate that the PSTN complex modulates behavior in response to hedonic factors normally inducing a “reward effect.” The PSTN complex is involved in a “non-feed” response equivalent of a “non-reward” evaluation: “I don’t want to consume this food, recog…