title: Statistical modeling implicates neuroanatomical circuit mediating stress relief by 'comfort' food.
abstract: A history of eating highly palatable foods reduces physiological and emotional responses to stress. For instance, we have previously shown that limited sucrose intake (4 ml of 30 % sucrose twice daily for 14 days) reduces hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis responses to stress. However, the neural mechanisms underlying stress relief by such 'comfort' foods are unclear, and could reveal an endogenous brain pathway for stress mitigation. As such, the present work assessed the expression of several proteins related to neuronal activation and/or plasticity in multiple stress- and reward-regulatory brain regions of rats after limited sucrose (vs. water control) intake. These data were then subjected to a series of statistical analyses, including Bayesian modeling, to identify the most likely neurocircuit mediating stress relief by sucrose. The analyses suggest that sucrose reduces HPA activation by dampening an excitatory basolateral amygdala-medial amygdala circuit, while also potentiating an inhibitory bed nucleus of the stria terminalis principle subdivision-mediated circuit, resulting in reduced HPA activation after stress. Collectively, the results support the hypothesis that sucrose limits stress responses via plastic changes to the structure and function of stress-regulatory neural circuits. The work also illustrates that advanced statistical methods are useful approaches to identify potentially novel and important underlying relationships in biological datasets.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, 2170 East Galbraith Rd- ML 0506, Cincinnati, OH, 45237, USA. yvonne.ulrich-lai@uc.edu.
authors.forename: Yvonne M
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Ulrich-Lai
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, 2170 East Galbraith Rd- ML 0506, Cincinnati, OH, 45237, USA.
authors.forename: Anne M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Christiansen
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematical Sciences, McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 45237, USA.
authors.forename: Xia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematical Sciences, McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 45237, USA.
authors.forename: Seongho
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, 2170 East Galbraith Rd- ML 0506, Cincinnati, OH, 45237, USA.
authors.forename: James P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Herman
mesh_terms: D000679:Amygdala / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D017362:Cyclic AMP Response Element-Binding Protein / Q000378:metabolism; D004435:Eating; D008297:Male; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000378:metabolism; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity; D010286:Paraventricular Hypothalamic Nucleus / Q000378:metabolism; D010766:Phosphorylation; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D012201:Reward; D012686:Septal Nuclei / Q000378:metabolism; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000378:metabolism*; D013395:Sucrose / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D016708:Synaptophysin / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D017362:Cyclic AMP Response Element-Binding Protein; D016708:Synaptophysin; D013395:Sucrose
keywords: Bayesian modeling; Comfort food; Reward; Stress; Sucrose; Synaptic plasticity