Escapability and generalization: Effect on ‘behavioral despair’

Recently, an animal model of depression, which appeared to be sensitive to clinically effective antidepressant treatments, was described by Porsolt et al (1978b). The model was derived from the observation that rats forced to swim in inescapable warm 0 (25 C) water for fifteen minutes become immobile after some time.

Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, 2004

The present experiment investigated the potentially differential effects of presenting inescapable tones with progressively increasing or decreasing durations on performance in behavioral despair, an animal model of depression based on two forced swim tests. Groups of female Wistar rats (n=8 each) were exposed to 60 inescapable tones (2000 Hz, 120 dB) either in a series of increasing or decreasing durations. Duration of tone exposure was incrementally increased (from 1 to 10 s) or decreased (from 10 to 1 s) by 1 s every six trials. A third group (n=8) was kept in the experimental chamber for a similar period but not exposed to tones. Animals were exposed to a 15 min forced swim test a day after tone (or control) treatment, followed by a 5 min swim test 24 h later. Analyses were done on diving, jumping, head shakes, duration and time of onset of immobility for the two swim tests. Compared to controls, animals that received tone exposure displayed greater immobility in the second swim test, indicating aggravation of behavioral despair due to inescapable tones.

Brain Research Protocols, 2005

The learned helplessness paradigm is a depression model in which animals are exposed to unpredictable and uncontrollable stress, e.g. electroshocks, and subsequently develop coping deficits for aversive but escapable situations (J.B. Overmier, M.E. Seligman, Effects of inescapable shock upon subsequent escape and avoidance responding, J. Comp. Physiol. Psychol. 63 (1967) 28-33 [15]). It represents a model with good similarity to the symptoms of depression, construct, and predictive validity in rats. Despite an increased need to investigate emotional, in particular depression-like behaviors in transgenic mice, so far only a few studies have been published using the learned helplessness paradigm. One reason may be the fact that-in contrast to rats (B. Vollmayr, F.A. Henn, Learned helplessness in the rat: improvements in validity and reliability, Brain Res. Brain Res. Protoc. 8 (2001) 1-7)-there is no generally accepted learned helplessness protocol available for mice. This prompted us to develop a reliable helplessness procedure in C57BL/6N mice, to exclude possible artifacts, and to establish a protocol, which yields a consistent fraction of helpless mice following the shock exposure. Furthermore, we validated this protocol pharmacologically using the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine. Here, we present a mouse model with good face and predictive validity that can be used for transgenic, behavioral, and pharmacological studies.

Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2013

Experimental models of depression often entail exposing a rodent to a stressor and subsequently characterizing changes in learning and anhedonia, which may reflect symptoms of human depression. Importantly, not all people, and not all laboratory rats, exposed to stressors develop depressed behavior; these "resilient" individuals are the focus of our review. Herein we describe research from the "learned helplessness" and "intermittent swim stress" (ISS) models of depression in which rats that were allowed to control the offset of the aversive stimulus with a behavioral response, and in a subset of rats that were not allowed to control the stressor that appeared to be behaviorally and neurochemically similar to rats that were either naive to stress or had controllability over the stressor. For example, rats exposed to inescapable tailshock, but do not develop learned helplessness, exhibit altered sensitivity to the behavioral effects of GABAA receptor ant...

Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1975

Similarity of impairment in naturally occurring depression and laboratory-induced, learned helplessness was demonstrated in college students. Three groups each of depressed and nondepressed students were exposed to escapable, inescapable, or no noise. Then they were tested on a series of 20 patterned anagrams. Depressed -no noise subjects were much poorer at solving individual anagrams and seeing the pattern than aondepressed -no noise subjects. Inescapable noise produced parallel deficits in nondepressed subjects relative to escapable or no noise, but inescapable noise did not increase impairment in depressed subjects. These findings support the learned helplessness model of depression, which claims that a belief in independence between responding and reinforcement is central to the etiology, symptoms, and cure of reactive depression. and Seligman and Maier (1967) used the term learned helplessness to describe the interference with escape/avoidance learning produced in dogs by prior exposure to uncontrollable electric shock. A number of studies have demonstrated that learned helplessness can be produced in a variety of situations, with different types of uncontrollable, aversive events, and in a wide variety of species (see Seligman, 1975b for a comprehensive review of these studies). Seligman, Maier, and Solomon (1971) argued that the main behavioral symptoms of learned helplessness-deficits in response initiation and in associating reinforcement with responding-result from learning that reinforcement and responding are independent. Such learning is said to lower performance by reducing the incentive for instrumental responding, which results in lowered response initiation. In addition, learning that reinforcement and responding are independent inter-

Physiology & Behavior, 2014

Social avoidance is a common characteristic of many clinical psychopathologies and is often triggered by social stress. Our lab uses Syrian hamsters to model stress-induced social avoidance, and we have previously established that both inescapable and escapable social defeat result in increased social avoidance when compared with no-defeat controls. Our previous work suggested, however, that social avoidance was significantly greater after inescapable defeat. The goal of this study was to determine if this difference in behavior after the two types of defeat was due to experimental differences in the controllability (i.e., escapability) of the defeat or simply to differences in the overall duration of the defeat. In Experiment 1, we used a yoked design to hold constant the duration of defeat between escapable and inescapable defeat conditions. This design resulted in only a very brief social defeat, yet when comparing defeated animals with no-defeat controls, a significant increase in social avoidance was still observed. In Experiment 2, we also used the yoked design, but the escape task was made more difficult to ensure a longer defeat experience. Again, we observed no effect of controllability. Together, these data suggest that the ability to escape a social stressor does not reduce the impact of the stressful experience. These results emphasize that social stressors need not be prolonged or uncontrollable to produce marked effects on subsequent behavior.

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2018

Past research has shown that hopelessness drastically reduces the quality of life. It follows that it could be particularly useful to improve our knowledge of the potential correlates of feelings of hopelessness. We propose a negative association between locomotion mode, or the self-regulation dimension concerned with movement from current state to future states, and hopelessness. We suggest, in two studies that higher locomotion is related to less hopelessness and results in higher levels of psychological well-being. In Study 1, we showed that locomotion was significantly and negatively related to hopelessness. In Study 2, we confirmed this result and also observed that the hopelessness experienced by locomotors partially mediated the positive relationship between locomotion orientation and psychological well-being. Implications for future research are discussed.

Psychopharmacology, 2010

Introduction The selective breeding of Roman lowavoidance (RLA) and high-avoidance (RHA) rats for, respectively, poor versus rapid acquisition of active avoidance in a shuttle-box has produced two phenotypes that differ drastically in the reactivity to stressful stimuli: in tests used to assess emotionality, RLA rats display passive ("reactive") coping and robust hypothalamus-pituitaryadrenal (HPA) axis reactivity, whereas RHA rats show proactive coping and blunted HPA axis responses. The behavioral and neuroendocrine traits that distinguish these lines suggest that RLA rats may be prone, whereas RHA rats may be resistant to develop depression-like behavior when exposed to stressful experimental conditions. Objective and methods To evaluate the performance of the Roman lines in the forced swim test, immobility, climbing, and swimming were assessed under baseline conditions (i.e., pretest in naïve animals or test after the administration of vehicle), and after subacute treatment with desipramine, fluoxetine, and chlorimipramine. Results Under baseline conditions, RLA rats displayed greater immobility and fewer climbing counts than RHA rats. In RLA rats, desipramine, fluoxetine, and chlorimipramine decreased immobility; moreover, desipramine and chlorimipramine increased climbing, whereas fluoxetine increased swimming. In RHA rats, none of these drugs affected immobility, swimming, or climbing. Conclusions RLA and RHA rats represent two divergent phenotypes respectively susceptible and resistant to display depression-like behavior in the forced swim test. Hence, comparative studies in these lines may help to develop novel working hypotheses on the relationships among genotype, temperament traits, and neural mechanisms underlying the vulnerability or resistance to stress-induced depression in humans.

Behavioural Brain Research

The forced swim test (FST) for rodents does not model despair or helplessness. It also is not a read-out for depression, anxiety, psychomotor retardation or autism, because these are anthropomorphic interpretations of the rodent's acquired immobility. Rather, the transition from swimming to immobility allows to examine the mechanistic underpinning of coping with inescapable stressors. However, in a recent detailed analysis of the FST application over the past 40 years, we noted a dramatic surge in the use of this test to phenotype animals as 'depressed'. As a follow up to that report, we now present an analysis of the use of the FST over the past three years. This literature analysis shows that the popularity of the FST is still increasing and that the majority of researchers qualifies the rodent's floating response as depressive-like behavior. However, over the past few years we also note a trend to interpret immobility rather as the expression of a coping strategy. In view of this result, we have sent a poll to the relevant authors to learn how consistent they are in naming FST behavior. Remarkably, we find a dramatic inverse correlation between their first qualification of acquired immobility as depressive-like behavior towards their current interpretation as coping strategy. In this contribution we have embedded our literature analysis and poll results in an update on the management of coping with inescapable stressors by processing in prefrontal cortical circuitry and glucocorticoid feedback. 'Two little mice fell in a bucket of cream. The first mouse quickly gave up and drowned. The second mouse wouldn't quit. He struggled so hard that eventually he turned that cream into butter and crawled out.' Frank Abagnale Sr. and Jr., from the moving picture Catch me if you can (2002). 2. Major depression With a one-year prevalence of about 7 percent in developed countries [9,10], major depression is a common illness (See Box 1 for the

Purpose. Clinical depression is an important social and economic problem. Depression can be characterized by three primary core symptoms: anhedonia (loss of pleasure or interest in most activities), depressed mood, and decreased energy levels or fatigue (1). However, the symptoms of depression can take many forms and range in severity from mild to life-threatening. Other symptoms may include changes in sleep pattern, changes in food intake, pessimism, feelings of guilt, or thoughts of suicide. The wide array of symptoms associated with clinical depression, many of which are emotional in nature, makes it difficult to develop and assess animal models of the condition. More than 35 years ago, however, researchers developed a set of criteria to assist in the identification of animal models of depression (2). Their criteria for an animal model of depression were that the model should show symptomology reasonably analogous to the human condition; that behavioral changes in the animal could be objectively monitored; that resultant behavioral changes could be reversed by therapies effective in humans; and that the model was reproducible. These criteria are still valid today, and in the intervening years, a number of animal models have met these criteria.