Project/scholarship details
- Project/scholarship ID
111814
- Reference
PTDC/SAU-NSC/111814/2009
- FundRef URI
- Funder
FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P.
- Funder's country
Portugal
- Funding program
5876-PPCDTI
- Funding amount
154,000.00 €
- Start date
2011-04-01
- End date
2014-03-31
Documents
Disconnection and reconnection: the morphological basis of (mal)adaptation to s...
Sousa, Nuno; Almeida, O. F. X.We would like to thank Antonio Pinheiro, Hugo Almeida, and José Miguel Soares for help with the illustrations. We also thank all past and present members of our laboratories for stimulating discussions.; Maladaptive responses to stress and the associated hypersecretion of glucocorticoids cause psychopathologies ranging from hyperemotional states and mood dysfunction to cognitive impairments. Research in both hu...
Stress-induced changes in human decision-making are reversible
Soares, José Miguel; Sampaio, Adriana; Ferreira, Luís Miguel; Santos, N. C.; Marques, Fernanda; Palha, Joana Almeida; Cerqueira, João; Sousa, NunoAppropriate decision-making relies on the ability to shift between different behavioral strategies according to the context in which decisions are made. A cohort of subjects exposed to prolonged stress, and respective gender- and age-matched controls, performed an instrumental behavioral task to assess their decision-making strategies. The stressed cohort was reevaluated after a 6-week stress-free period. The b...
Stress transiently affects Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer
Morgado, Pedro; Silva, Miguel; Sousa, Nuno; Cerqueira, João JoséStress has a strong impact in the brain, impairing decision-making processes as a result of changes in circuits involving the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices and the striatum. Given that these same circuits are key for action control and outcome encoding, we hypothesized that adaptive responses to which these are essential functions, could also be targeted by stress. To test this hypothesis we herein asse...
Variable delay-to-signal: a fast paradigm for assessment of aspects of impulsiv...
Almeida, Hugo Leite; Melo, António; Pêgo, José M.; Bernardo, Sara; Milhazes, Nuno; Borges, Fernanda; Sousa, Nuno; Almeida, Armando; Cerqueira, JoãoTesting impulsive behavior in rodents is challenging and labor-intensive. We developed a new behavioral paradigm-the Variable Delay-to-Signal (VDS) test-that provides rapid and simultaneous assessment of response and decision impulsivity in rodents. Presentation of a light at variable delays signals the permission for action (nose poke) contingent with a reward. 2 blocks of 25 trials at 3 s delay flank a block ...
Perceived stress in obsessive-compulsive disorder is related with obsessive but...
Morgado, Pedro; Freitas, D.; Bessa, J. M.; Sousa, Nuno; Cerqueira, JoãoObsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is achronic psychiatric disorder characterized by recurrent intrusive thoughts and/or repetitive compulsory behaviors. This psychiatric disorder is known to be stress responsive, as symptoms increase during periods of stress but also because stressful events may precede the onset of OCD. However, only a few and inconsistent reports have been published about the stress percept...
Day and night: diurnal phase influences the response to chronic mild stress
Aslani, Shilan; Harb, Mazen R.; Costa, Patrício Soares; Almeida, O. F. X.; Sousa, Nuno; Palha, Joana AlmeidaChronic mild stress (CMS) protocols are widely used to create animal models of depression. Despite this, the inconsistencies in the reported effects may be indicative of crucial differences in methodology. Here, we considered the time of the diurnal cycle in which stressors are applied as a possible relevant temporal variable underlying the association between stress and behavior. Most laboratories test behavio...
A novel risk-based decision-making paradigm
Morgado, Pedro; Marques, Fernanda; Silva, Miguel; Sousa, Nuno; Cerqueira, JoãoThis paper presents a novel rodent decision-making task that explores uncertainty, independently of expectation and predictability. Using a 5-hole operating box, adult male Wistar rats were given choices between a small certain (safe) food reward and a large uncertain (risk) food reward. We found that animals strongly preferred the safe option when it had a fixed position or was cued with a light in a random pl...
Stress induced risk-aversion is reverted by D2/D3 agonist in the rat
Morgado, Pedro; Marques, Fernanda; Ribeiro, Beatriz; Leite-Almeida, Hugo; Pêgo, José M.; Rodrigues, Ana J.; Dalla, Christina; Kokras, Nikos; Sousa, NunoStress exposure triggers cognitive and behavioral impairments that influence decision-making processes. Decisions under a context of uncertainty require complex reward-prediction processes that are known to be mediated by the mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) system in brain areas sensitive to the deleterious effects of chronic stress, in particular the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Using a decision-making task, we...
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