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Investigating hormone-induced changes in affective state using the affective bias test in male and female rats.

ABSTRACT: Recent clinical and pre-clinical research suggests that affective biases may play an important role in the development and perpetuation of mood disorders. Studies in animals have also revealed that similar neuropsychological processes can be measured in non-human species using behavioural assays designed to measure biases in learning and memory or decision-making. Given the proposed links between hormones and mood, we used the affective bias test to investigate the effects of different hormone treatments in both male and female rats. Animals were pre-treated with acute doses of hormone or vehicle control prior to learning each of two independent substrate-reward associations. During a subsequent choice test, positive or negative biases were observed by animal's preference towards or away from the substrate learnt during drug treatment respectively. In both sexes, oestradiol and the oestrogen-like compound bisphenol A induced positive biases, whilst blockade of oestrogen hormones with formestane induced a negative bias. Progesterone induced a negative bias in both sexes, but testosterone only induced a negative bias in males. Blocking testosterone with flutamide induced a positive bias in both sexes at the higher dose (10 mg/kg). The oxytocin analogue, carbetocin induced positive biases in both sexes but the vasopressin analogue, desmopressin, induced a positive bias in male rats only. These results provide evidence that modulating levels of hormones using exogenous treatments can induce affective biases in rats. They also suggest that hormone-induced affective biases influence cognitive and emotional behaviour and could have longer-term effects in some mood disorders.

SUBMITTER: Hinchcliffe JK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7193894 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Investigating hormone-induced changes in affective state using the affective bias test in male and female rats.

Hinchcliffe Justyna K JK Mendl Michael M Robinson Emma S J ESJ

Psychoneuroendocrinology 20200307

Recent clinical and pre-clinical research suggests that affective biases may play an important role in the development and perpetuation of mood disorders. Studies in animals have also revealed that similar neuropsychological processes can be measured in non-human species using behavioural assays designed to measure biases in learning and memory or decision-making. Given the proposed links between hormones and mood, we used the affective bias test to investigate the effects of different hormone t ...[more]

PMID: 32179367

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Project description:Background and purposePredicting the risk of drug-induced adverse psychiatric effects is important but currently not possible in non-human species. We investigated whether the affective bias test (ABT) could provide a preclinical method with translational and predictive validity.Experimental approachThe ABT is a bowl-digging task, which quantifies biases associated with learning and memory. Rats encounter independent learning experiences, on separate days, under either acute manipulations (e.g. pro-depressant vs. control) or different absolute reward values (e.g. high vs. low). A bias is observed during a preference test when an animal's choices reflect their prior experience. We investigated the effects of putative pro-depressant drug treatments following acute or chronic administration on the formation of an affective bias or reward-induced positive bias respectively.Key resultsThe immunomodulators LPS (10 ?g·kg-1 ), corticosterone (10 and 30 mg·kg-1 ) and IFN-? (100 U·kg-1 ) induced a negative affective bias following acute treatment. Tetrabenazine (1 mg·kg-1 ) also induced a negative bias, but no effects were observed with varenicline, carbamazepine or montelukast. Chronic treatment with IFN-? (100 U·kg-1 ) and retinoic acid (10 mg·kg-1 ) impaired the formation of a reward-induced positive bias but did not alter sucrose preference test (SPT).Conclusions and implicationsThe ABT has the potential to provide a novel approach to predict pro-depressant risk in a non-human species. Negative biases induced by acute treatment in the standard version of the task may also predict longer-term effects on reward processing as shown by the deficit in reward-induced positive bias following chronic treatment, an effect distinct from anhedonia in the SPT.Linked articlesThis article is part of a themed section on Pharmacology of Cognition: a Panacea for Neuropsychiatric Disease? To view the other articles in this section visit http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bph.v174.19/issuetoc.

Dataset Information

Investigating hormone-induced changes in affective state using the affective bias test in male and female rats.

Publications

Investigating hormone-induced changes in affective state using the affective bias test in male and female rats.

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