Long-term effects of controllability or the lack of it on coping abilities and stress resilience in the rat.
Stress. 2014-08-11; 17(5): 423-430
DOI: 10.3109/10253890.2014.930430
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Findings suggest that stress-induced impaired learning and coping abilities may
be attributed more to the psychological nature of the stressor, rather than its
physical properties. It has been proposed that establishing controllability over
stressors can ameliorate some of its effects on cognition and behavior. Gaining
controllability was suggested to be associated with the development of stress
resilience. Based on repeated exposure to the two-way shuttle avoidance task, we
previously developed and validated a behavioral task that leads to a strict
dissociation between gaining controllability (to the level that the associated
fear is significantly reduced) and a fearful state of uncontrollability.
Employing this protocol, we investigated here the impact of gaining or failing to
gain emotional controllability on indices of anxiety and depression and on
subsequent abilities to cope with positively or negatively reinforcing learning
experiences. In agreement with previous studies, rats exposed to the
uncontrollable protocol demonstrated high concentration of sera corticosterone,
increased immobility, reduced duration of struggling in the forced swim test and
impaired ability to acquire subsequent learning tasks. Achieving emotional
controllability resulted in resilience to stress as was indicated by longer
duration of struggling in the forced swim test, and enhanced learning abilities.
Our prolonged training protocol, with the demonstrated ability of rats to gain
emotional controllability, is proposed as a useful tool to study the
neurobiological mechanisms of stress resilience.