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Association of Increased Amygdala Activity with Stress-Induced Anxiety but not Social Avoidance Behavior in Mice

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Abstract

Chronic stress leads to many psychiatric disorders, including social and anxiety disorders that are associated with over-activation of neurons in the basolateral amygdala (BLA). However, not all individuals develop psychiatric diseases, many showing considerable resilience against stress exposure. Whether BLA neuronal activity is involved in regulating an individual’s vulnerability to stress remains elusive. In this study, using a mouse model of chronic social defeat stress (CSDS), we divided the mice into susceptible and resilient subgroups based on their social interaction behavior. Using in vivo fiber photometry and in vitro patch-clamp recording, we showed that CSDS persistently (after 20 days of recovery from stress) increased BLA neuronal activity in all the mice regardless of their susceptible or resilient nature, although impaired social interaction behavior was only observed in susceptible mice. Increased anxiety-like behavior, on the other hand, was evident in both groups. Notably, the CSDS-induced increase of BLA neuronal activity correlated well with the heightened anxiety-like but not the social avoidance behavior in mice. These findings provide new insight to our understanding of the role of neuronal activity in the amygdala in mediating stress-related psychiatric disorders.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970953, 81930032, and 81760505) and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province, China (20192ACB21024, 20192ACB20023, 20181ACG70003, and 20192BCB23008).

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  1. Shou-He Huang and Wei-Zhu Liu have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Fear and Anxiety Disorders, Institutes of Life Science, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330031, China

    Shou-He Huang, Wei-Zhu Liu, Xia Qin, Chen-Yi Guo, Qing-Cheng Xiong, Yu Wang, Bing-Xing Pan & Wen-Hua Zhang

  2. Institute of Translational Medicine, Nanchang University, Nanchang, 330001, China

    Ping Hu

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  1. Shou-He Huang
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Correspondence to Bing-Xing Pan or Wen-Hua Zhang.

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Huang, SH., Liu, WZ., Qin, X. et al. Association of Increased Amygdala Activity with Stress-Induced Anxiety but not Social Avoidance Behavior in Mice. Neurosci. Bull. 38, 16–28 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12264-021-00762-0

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