Archival ReportBehavioral Engagement With Playable Objects Resolves Stress-Induced Adaptive Changes by Reshaping the Reward System
Section snippets
Methods and Materials
The details of methods and materials are available in Supplement 1.
Results
We developed a rodent model to study behavioral effects of playing with objects. Different types of objects that included cork rods, glass marbles, and plastic cryotubes were tested to determine if the objects induced motivated behaviors that involved exploring activity without habituation over repeated exposure. Mice exhibited strong exploring activity on cork rods, but not plastic cryotubes and glass marbles. Because mice chewed and ate parts of the cork rods, we explored if a gauze roll with
Engagement With Playable Objects Produced Antidepressive Effects via Activation of the Reward System
When gauze rolls were presented in a cage, mice actively explored and played with them without habituation over repeated exposure (Figure 1A–E; Figure S2 in Supplement 1; Supplemental Video S1). Continual engagement with gauze rolls increased dopamine release and its metabolite levels in the NAc-lSh (Figure 2E–Q) and rescued stress-induced depressive-like behaviors. In contrast, inhibition of the VTA→NAc-lSh pathway during gauze-roll play blocked antidepressive effects of gauze-roll play (
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
This research was supported by Grant No. 2021R1A2B5B02002245 (to P-LH) from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, Republic of Korea.
The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
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