Structures and limits of animal models: examples from alcohol research

Hazardous drinking and alcohol use disorders

Alcohol is one of the most widely consumed psychoactive drugs globally. Hazardous drinking, defined by quantity and frequency of consumption, is associated with acute and chronic morbidity. Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are psychiatric syndromes characterized by impaired control over drinking and other symptoms. Contemporary aetiological perspectives on AUDs apply a biopsychosocial framework that emphasizes the interplay of genetics, neurobiology, psychology, and an individual's social and societal context. There is strong evidence that AUDs are genetically influenced, but with a complex polygenic architecture. Likewise, there is robust evidence for environmental influences, such as adverse childhood exposures and maladaptive developmental trajectories. Well-established biological and psychological determinants of AUDs include neuroadaptive changes following persistent use, differences in brain structure and function, and motivational determinants including overvaluation of alcohol reinforcement, acute effects of environmental triggers and stress, elevations in multiple facets of impulsivity, and lack of alternative reinforcers. Social factors include bidirectional roles of social networks and sociocultural influences, such as public health control strategies and social determinants of health. An array of evidence-based approaches for reducing alcohol harms are available, including screening, pharmacotherapies, psychological interventions and policy strategies, but are substantially underused. Priorities for the field include translating advances in basic biobehavioural research into novel clinical applications and, in turn, promoting widespread implementation of evidence-based clinical approaches in practice and health-care systems.

Rat Strain and Sex Differences in Leptin Responses to Immobilization Stress

The effects of immobilization (IM) stress on plasma leptin levels and bodyweight in adult Sprague-Dawley (19 males, 20 females) and Long-Evans (20 males, 20 females) rats were investigated. Following a 10-day baseline period, half the animals from each experimental group were exposed to immobilization stress or no-stress 20 min/day for 21 days. Plasma leptin and corticosterone levels were measured following stress or no-stress exposure on the last day of the experiment. Corticosterone levels confirmed stress exposure. Important interactive effects of stress, strain, and sex on leptin and corticosterone levels were also observed. Specifically, females displayed higher leptin levels than did males, regardless of stress exposure. Strain interacted with stress such that stressed Long-Evans rats displayed higher leptin levels than did stressed Sprague-Dawley rats; there were no strain differences in leptin levels among nonstressed rats. Also, correlations between leptin and corticosterone were strain-specific. Results are discussed with respect to previously unreported strain differences in the effects of immobilization stress on circulating plasma leptin and the relevance to inconsistent findings in the human literature.

Genetics of behavioral aging: animal models and the human condition

Animal models have played an important role in elucidating the nature of aging processes in general, and of behavioral aging specifically. Both aging and the behavioral processes of interest in this context are manifestly complex. Recent scholarship focusing on the nature of systems has provided new and varied conceptual schemata for addressing such intricacy. In this report, animal model systems are viewed in relation to some elementary systems notions. Limitations of the prototypical animal model are discussed, with particular emphasis on the implications of gene-gene and gene-environment interactions. These same interactions also provide opportunities. The traditional methods of genetic manipulation and control, combined with the powerful new tools of molecular genetics, and informed by systems considerations, offer broadened research horizons.