ABSTRACT

Disruption of sleep due to acute or chronic stress can lead to changes in emotional memory processing. Sleep disturbances are highly prevalent in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but still, the contribution of sleep deprivation on the susceptibility to PTSD has received little attention. To determine whether rapid eye movement sleep deprivation (SD) alters the development of fear expression or fear-associated memory impairment in adolescent rats, we performed animal emotional behavior tests using an SD animal model with the flowerpot technique. SD rats showed an increase in locomotor activity frequency and a decrease in sucrose consumption compared to control rats. An increase in freezing behavior during shock trials was observed in SD rats. Noticeably, it was observed that when applying the SD condition after fear stimuli exposure, fear extinction was delayed more in SD rats than in control rats. Overall, these results indicate that SD in adolescent rats leads to increased locomotor activity and anhedonic behavior, as well as increased fear expression and delayed fear extinction, suggesting that SD would lead to increased severity of PTSD-like phenotype.

摘要

由于急性或慢性压力导致的睡眠中断可能导致情绪记忆过程的变化。睡眠障碍在创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）中非常普遍，但是，睡眠剥夺对PTSD易感性的贡献却很少受到关注。为了确定快速眼动睡眠剥夺（SD）是否会改变青春期大鼠的恐惧表达或恐惧相关的记忆障碍的发展，我们使用具有花盆技术的SD动物模型进行了动物情绪行为测试。与对照大鼠相比，SD大鼠表现出运动活动频率的增加和蔗糖消耗的减少。在SD大鼠中观察到了休克试验期间冰冻行为的增加。值得注意的是，观察到在恐惧刺激暴露后应用SD条件时，害怕灭绝在SD大鼠中比在延迟大鼠中更多。总体而言，这些结果表明，青春期大鼠的SD导致自发活动和性快感行为的增加，以及恐惧表达的增加和恐惧的消失，这表明SD会导致PTSD样表型的严重性增加。