Pleasurable behaviors reduce stress via brain reward pathways.
Individuals often eat calorically dense, highly palatable "comfort" foods during stress for stress relief. This article demonstrates that palatable food intake (limited intake of sucrose drink) reduces neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and behavioral responses to stress in rats. Artificially sweetened (saccharin) drink reproduces the stress dampening, whereas oral intragastric gavage of sucrose is without effect. Together, these results suggest that the palatable/rewarding properties of sucrose are necessary and sufficient for stress dampening. In support of this finding, another type of natural reward (sexual activity) similarly reduces stress responses. Ibotenate lesions of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) prevent stress dampening by sucrose, suggesting that neural activity in the BLA is necessary for the effect. Moreover, sucrose intake increases mRNA and protein expression in the BLA for numerous genes linked with functional and/or structural plasticity. Lastly, stress dampening by sucrose is persistent, which is consistent with long-term changes in neural activity after synaptic remodeling. Thus, natural rewards, such as palatable foods, provide a general means of stress reduction, likely via structural and/or functional plasticity in the BLA. These findings provide a clearer understanding of the motivation for consuming palatable foods during times of stress and influence therapeutic strategies for the prevention and/or treatment of obesity and other stress-related disorders.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45237, USA. yvonne.ulrich-lai@uc.edu.
Yvonne M
YM
Ulrich-Lai
Anne M
AM
Christiansen
Michelle M
MM
Ostrander
Amanda A
AA
Jones
Kenneth R
KR
Jones
Dennis C
DC
Choi
Eric G
EG
Krause
Nathan K
NK
Evanson
Amy R
AR
Furay
Jon F
JF
Davis
Matia B
MB
Solomon
Annette D
AD
de Kloet
Kellie L
KL
Tamashiro
Randall R
RR
Sakai
Randy J
RJ
Seeley
Stephen C
SC
Woods
James P
JP
Herman
D000679:Amygdala / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D002320:Cardiovascular Physiological Phenomena; D006728:Hormones / Q000097:blood; D008297:Male; D046228:Microarray Analysis; D057181:Pleasure / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013395:Sucrose / Q000494:pharmacology*; D013686:Telemetry
D006728:Hormones; D013395:Sucrose