title: Chronic Social Defeat Stress Modulates Dendritic Spines Structural Plasticity in Adult Mouse Frontal Association Cortex.
abstract: Chronic stress is associated with occurrence of many mental disorders. Previous studies have shown that dendrites and spines of pyramidal neurons of the prefrontal cortex undergo drastic reorganization following chronic stress experience. So the prefrontal cortex is believed to play a key role in response of neural system to chronic stress. However, how stress induces dynamic structural changes in neural circuit of prefrontal cortex remains unknown. In the present study, we examined the effects of chronic social defeat stress on dendritic spine structural plasticity in the mouse frontal association (FrA) cortexin vivousing two-photon microscopy. We found that chronic stress altered spine dynamics in FrA and increased the connectivity in FrA neural circuits. We also found that the changes in spine dynamics in FrA are correlated with the deficit of sucrose preference in defeated mice. Our findings suggest that chronic stress experience leads to adaptive change in neural circuits that may be important for encoding stress experience related memory and anhedonia.
authors.affiliation: Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China; MoE Key Laboratory for Biomedical Photonics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shu
authors.affiliation: Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China; MoE Key Laboratory for Biomedical Photonics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Tonghui
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0652-9370
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D000818:Animals; D066272:Basolateral Nuclear Complex / Q000166:cytology; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D049229:Dendritic Spines / Q000502:physiology*; D003863:Depression / Q000503:physiopathology; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000166:cytology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D009434:Neural Pathways; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000166:cytology; D012930:Social Dominance; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology