Sharing stressful experiences attenuates anxiety-related cognitive and sleep impairments

Linking Social Cognition to Learning and Memory

Many mammals have evolved to be social creatures. In humans, the ability to learn from others' experiences is essential to survival; and from an early age, individuals are surrounded by a social environment that helps them develop a variety of skills, such as walking, talking, and avoiding danger. Similarly, in rodents, behaviors, such as food preference, exploration of novel contexts, and social approach, can be learned through social interaction. Social encounters facilitate new learning and help modify preexisting memories throughout the lifespan of an organism. Moreover, social encounters can help buffer stress or the effects of negative memories, as well as extinguish maladaptive behaviors. Given the importance of such interactions, there has been increasing work studying social learning and applying its concepts in a wide range of fields, including psychotherapy and medical sociology. The process of social learning, including its neural and behavioral mechanisms, has also been a rapidly growing field of interest in neuroscience. However, the term "social learning" has been loosely applied to a variety of psychological phenomena, often without clear definition or delineations. Therefore, this review gives a definition for specific aspects of social learning, provides an overview of previous work at the circuit, systems, and behavioral levels, and finally, introduces new findings on the social modulation of learning. We contextualize such social processes in the brain both through the role of the hippocampus and its capacity to process "social engrams" as well as through the brainwide realization of social experiences. With the integration of new technologies, such as optogenetics, chemogenetics, and calcium imaging, manipulating social engrams will likely offer a novel therapeutic target to enhance the positive buffering effects of social experiences or to inhibit fear-inducing social stimuli in models of anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Pair exposure with conspecific during fear conditioning induces the link between freezing and passive avoidance behaviors in rats

Social factor plays an important role in dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder related to excessive physiological fear response and insufficient fear memory extinction of the brain. However, although social circumstances occurred not only during contextual retrieval but also during fear conditioning, most previous studies focused on the advantageous aspects of social buffering in fear retrieval period. To demonstrate the association between fear responses and fear memory from social stimuli during fear conditioning, pair exposed rats with conspecific as social buffering were subjected to a fear conditioning of passive avoidance test to evaluate memory function and freezing behavior. Whereas single exposed rats showed the significant increase of freezing behaviors and passive avoidance behaviors compared to control rats, pair exposed rats showed significant alleviation of the freezing behaviors and passive avoidance behaviors compared to single exposed rats. Furthermore, we determined a significant correlation between freezing and passive avoidance behavioral alteration in pair exposed rats. Taken together, we suggest that pair exposure with conspecific during fear conditioning helps to cope with both freezing response and fear memory systems and their reciprocal interaction has a crucial potential as a resource for the relief of unreasonable stress responses in posttraumatic stress disorder.

The effects of social housing on extinction of fear conditioning in rapid eye movement sleep-deprived rats

Both human and animal research indicate that rapid eye movement sleep (REM) plays an important role in the processing of emotional information. REM is altered after fear conditioning in rats, but this alteration can be mitigated by exposure to a naïve conspecific. In addition, both the housing condition (isolated vs paired) and the experiences of rats' cagemates can influence the response to aversive events. Based on this prior work, the present study sought to determine the effects of social housing on the previously demonstrated impairment in the extinction of conditioned fear responses produced by REM deprivation. Rats were assigned to one of three housing conditions: housed with a naïve rat, housed with another fear-conditioned rat, or housed alone. The results demonstrated that rats housed with either a naïve or a fear-conditioned conspecific exhibited an impairment in the acquisition of extinction as a consequence of REM deprivation, as observed in previous studies. However, rats in the isolated condition demonstrated a trend toward an impairment only after continued extinction training. These results indicate that the effects of social housing on REM deprivation-induced impairments in learning and memory are subtle, but may explain some conflicting findings in the literature.

Effect of five-consecutive-day exposure to an anxiogenic stressor on sleep-wake activity in rats

Repeated exposure to an anxiogenic stressor (AS) is a known environmental factor for the development of depression, yet the progression of sleep-wake (S-W) changes associated with the onset of AS-induced depression (ASID) is not completely understood. Thus, the aim of this study was to identify these progressive S-W changes by developing ASID in rats, via repeated exposure to an AS, and compare this ASID-associated sleep phenotype with the sleep phenotype of human depression. To achieve this aim, rats were first recorded for a 6 h period of baseline S-W activity without AS. Then, rats were subjected to 5 days of AS [Day 1: inescapable foot-shock; 5 trials of 3 s foot-shocks (1.0 mA) at 3 min intervals; Days 3–5: 15 trials of 5 s foot-shocks at 45 s intervals]. S-W activity was recorded for 6 h immediately after each AS treatment session. Two days later rats were again recorded for 6 h of S-W activity, but with no exposure to the AS (NASD). Compared to the baseline day: Day 1 of AS (ASD-1) increased wakefulness, slow-wave sleep (SWS) latency, and rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep latency, but decreased the total amount of REM sleep; ASD-2 animals remained awake throughout the 6 h S-W recording period; ASD-3, ASD-4, and ASD-5 (ASDs-3–5) decreased wakefulness, SWS latency, and REM sleep latency, but increased the total amount of REM sleep. Interestingly, these results reveal that initial exposure to the AS versus later, repeated exposure to the AS produced opposing S-W changes. On NASD, animals exhibited baseline-like S-W activity, except slightly less REM sleep. These results suggest that repeated AS produces a sleep phenotype that resembles the sleep phenotype of depression in humans, but consistent re-exposure to the AS is required. These results are promising because the methodological simplicity and reversibility of the ASID-associated S-W phenotype could be more advantageous than other animal models for studying the pathophysiological mechanisms that underlie the expression of ASID.

Adolescent social stress does not necessarily lead to a compromised adaptive capacity during adulthood: a study on the consequences of social stress in rats

Childhood bullying or social stress in adolescent humans is generally considered to increase the risk of developing behavioral disorders like depression in adulthood. Juveniles are hypothesized to be particularly sensitive to stressors in their environment due to the relatively late maturation of brain areas that are targeted by stress such as the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. In our study male adolescent rats were subjected to repeated social defeat on postnatal day (PND) 28, 31 and 34 (experiment 1) or to daily social defeats between PND 35 and 42 (experiment 2). Adolescent rats in experiment 1 were socially housed in pairs with a male of similar age during and after the social defeat. In experiment 2 adolescents were housed either alone or with an age-mate for 7 days (PND 35-42) next to either a highly aggressive or a non-aggressive adult male neighbor with whom a repeated physical interaction was allowed. In experiment 1 the adolescent defeats affected subsequent play behavior with the cage mate. Socially stressed rats more frequently initiated play behavior but also adopted more frequently submissive postures during the play fights. As adults, they seemed to cope behaviorally and physiologically better with a similar exposure to a residential aggressive male rat than unstressed controls. In experiment 2 acute effects of adolescent social stress were studied on neuroplasticity markers like hippocampal cell proliferation and neurogenesis as well as hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels. The 2nd experiment also studied long-term effects of the adolescent stress in the response to an adult social defeat. A few acute but minor changes in brain plasticity markers and behavior were observed but these were transient and no behavioral or physiological effects persisted into adulthood. The results from both experiments support the theory developed in the so-called "match-mismatch hypothesis" which claims that the final consequence of childhood adversity depends on how well the early life environment matches the challenges in later life. Socially stressed adolescents are rather resilient to the lasting behavioral and physiological effects of the stress exposure if they are socially housed afterward and have the ability to recover.