Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 31 July 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5940, pp. 621 - 625
DOI: 10.1126/science.1171203
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Reports

Chronic Stress Causes Frontostriatal Reorganization and Affects Decision-Making

Eduardo Dias-Ferreira,1,2,3 João C. Sousa,1 Irene Melo,1 Pedro Morgado,1 Ana R. Mesquita,1 João J. Cerqueira,1 Rui M. Costa,2,4,* Nuno Sousa1,*

The ability to shift between different behavioral strategies is necessary for appropriate decision-making. Here, we show that chronic stress biases decision-making strategies, affecting the ability of stressed animals to perform actions on the basis of their consequences. Using two different operant tasks, we revealed that, in making choices, rats subjected to chronic stress became insensitive to changes in outcome value and resistant to changes in action-outcome contingency. Furthermore, chronic stress caused opposing structural changes in the associative and sensorimotor corticostriatal circuits underlying these different behavioral strategies, with atrophy of medial prefrontal cortex and the associative striatum and hypertrophy of the sensorimotor striatum. These data suggest that the relative advantage of circuits coursing through sensorimotor striatum observed after chronic stress leads to a bias in behavioral strategies toward habit.

1 Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), School of Health Sciences, University of Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal.
2 Section on In Vivo Neural Function, Laboratory for Integrative Neuroscience, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20852–9411, USA.
3 Ph.D. Programme in Experimental Biology and Biomedicine (PDBEB), Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra, 3004-517 Coimbra, Portugal.
4 Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Rua da Quinta Grande, 2780-901 Oeiras, Portugal.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: njcsousa{at}ecsaude.uminho.pt (N.S.) or costarui{at}mail.nih.gov (R.M.C.)

Read the Full Text


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Stress impairs optimal behavior in a water foraging choice task in rats.
L. K. Graham, T. Yoon, and J. J. Kim (2009)
Learn. Mem. 17, 790-793
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »
Genetic Deletion of A2A Adenosine Receptors in the Striatum Selectively Impairs Habit Formation.
C. Yu, J. Gupta, J.-F. Chen, and H. H. Yin (2009)
J. Neurosci. 29, 15100-15103
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)