title: Combination of high fat diet and chronic stress retracts hippocampal dendrites.
abstract: Adult male rats were fed a low or high fat diet and given psychosocial stress (crowded and unstable housing with daily predator exposure) for 3 weeks. Neither stress nor high fat diet, alone, produced dendritic atrophy; only the group given the combination of stress and high fat diet developed a reduction of the length and number of branch points of apical dendrites of CA3 neurons. These findings indicate that a synergy between high fat diet and stress caused a retraction of CA3 dendrites. The findings are consistent with work on peripheral (e.g., cardiovascular) systems demonstrating a synergy between stress and high fat diet, and are relevant toward understanding how diet and stress interact to adversely affect brain and memory processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1104, USA.
authors.forename: Sarah E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Baran
authors.forename: Adam M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.forename: Jonathan K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Kleen
authors.forename: Cainan H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Foltz
authors.forename: Ryan L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Wright
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Diamond
authors.forename: Cheryl D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Conrad
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001835:Body Weight; D003441:Crowding / Q000503:physiopathology; D003712:Dendrites / Q000502:physiology*; D004041:Dietary Fats; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D008297:Male; D017966:Pyramidal Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000503:physiopathology*
chemical_list: D004041:Dietary Fats