title: Learning to cope with stress: psychobiological mechanisms of stress resilience.
abstract: Stress is the main non-genetic source of psychopathology. Therefore, the identification of neurobiological bases of resilience, the resistance to pathological outcomes of stress, is a most relevant topic of research. It is an accepted view that resilient individuals are those who do not develop helplessness, or other depression-like phenotypes, following a history of stress. In the present review, we discuss the phenotypic differences between mice of the inbred C57BL/6J and DBA/2J strains that could be associated with the strain-specific resistance to helplessness observable in DBA/2J mice. The reviewed results support the hypothesis that resilience to stress-promoted helplessness develops through interactions between a specific genetic makeup and a history of stress, and is associated with an active coping style, a bias toward the use of stimulus-response learning, and specific adaptive changes of mesoaccumbens dopamine transmission under stress. Finally, evidence that compulsivity represents a side effect of the neuroadaptive processes fostering resistance to develop depressive-like phenotypes under stress is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, Rome. Simona.cabib@uniroma1.it
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cabib
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Campus
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Colelli
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004298:Dopamine / Q000378:metabolism; D058068:Endophenotypes; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008811:Mice, Inbred DBA; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology; D009714:Nucleus Accumbens / Q000378:metabolism; D013045:Species Specificity; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013550:Swimming
chemical_list: D004298:Dopamine