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Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System

Reward signals encoded in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system guide approach/seeking behaviors to all varieties of life-supporting stimuli (rewards). Differences in dopamine (DA) levels have been found between dominant and submissive animals. However, it is still unclear whether these differences ari...

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Autores principales: Lozano-Montes, Laura, Astori, Simone, Abad, Sonia, Guillot de Suduiraut, Isabelle, Sandi, Carmen, Zalachoras, Ioannis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6460316/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31024272
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00069
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author Lozano-Montes, Laura
Astori, Simone
Abad, Sonia
Guillot de Suduiraut, Isabelle
Sandi, Carmen
Zalachoras, Ioannis
author_facet Lozano-Montes, Laura
Astori, Simone
Abad, Sonia
Guillot de Suduiraut, Isabelle
Sandi, Carmen
Zalachoras, Ioannis
author_sort Lozano-Montes, Laura
collection PubMed
description Reward signals encoded in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system guide approach/seeking behaviors to all varieties of life-supporting stimuli (rewards). Differences in dopamine (DA) levels have been found between dominant and submissive animals. However, it is still unclear whether these differences arise as a consequence of the rewarding nature of the acquisition of a dominant rank, or whether they preexist and favor dominance by promoting reward-seeking behavior. Given that acquisition of a social rank determines animals’ priority access to resources, we hypothesized that differences in reward-seeking behavior might affect hierarchy establishment and that modulation of the dopaminergic system could affect the outcome of a social competition. We characterized reward-seeking behaviors based on rats’ latency to get a palatable-reward when given temporary access to it. Subsequently, rats exhibiting short (SL) and long (LL) latency to get the rewards cohabitated for more than 2 weeks, in order to establish a stable hierarchy. We found that SL animals exhibited dominant behavior consistently in social competition tests [for palatable-rewards and two water competition tests (WCTs)] after hierarchy was established, indicating that individual latency to rewards predicted dominance. Moreover, because SL animals showed higher mesolimbic levels of DA than LL rats, we tested whether stimulation of mesolimbic DA neurons could affect the outcome of a social competition. Indeed, a combination of optical stimulation of mesolimbic DA neurons during individual training and during a social competition test for palatable rewards resulted in improved performance on this test.
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spelling pubmed-64603162019-04-25 Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System Lozano-Montes, Laura Astori, Simone Abad, Sonia Guillot de Suduiraut, Isabelle Sandi, Carmen Zalachoras, Ioannis Front Behav Neurosci Neuroscience Reward signals encoded in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system guide approach/seeking behaviors to all varieties of life-supporting stimuli (rewards). Differences in dopamine (DA) levels have been found between dominant and submissive animals. However, it is still unclear whether these differences arise as a consequence of the rewarding nature of the acquisition of a dominant rank, or whether they preexist and favor dominance by promoting reward-seeking behavior. Given that acquisition of a social rank determines animals’ priority access to resources, we hypothesized that differences in reward-seeking behavior might affect hierarchy establishment and that modulation of the dopaminergic system could affect the outcome of a social competition. We characterized reward-seeking behaviors based on rats’ latency to get a palatable-reward when given temporary access to it. Subsequently, rats exhibiting short (SL) and long (LL) latency to get the rewards cohabitated for more than 2 weeks, in order to establish a stable hierarchy. We found that SL animals exhibited dominant behavior consistently in social competition tests [for palatable-rewards and two water competition tests (WCTs)] after hierarchy was established, indicating that individual latency to rewards predicted dominance. Moreover, because SL animals showed higher mesolimbic levels of DA than LL rats, we tested whether stimulation of mesolimbic DA neurons could affect the outcome of a social competition. Indeed, a combination of optical stimulation of mesolimbic DA neurons during individual training and during a social competition test for palatable rewards resulted in improved performance on this test. Frontiers Media S.A. 2019-04-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6460316/ /pubmed/31024272 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00069 Text en Copyright © 2019 Lozano-Montes, Astori, Abad, Guillot de Suduiraut, Sandi and Zalachoras. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Lozano-Montes, Laura
Astori, Simone
Abad, Sonia
Guillot de Suduiraut, Isabelle
Sandi, Carmen
Zalachoras, Ioannis
Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System
title Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System
title_full Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System
title_fullStr Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System
title_full_unstemmed Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System
title_short Latency to Reward Predicts Social Dominance in Rats: A Causal Role for the Dopaminergic Mesolimbic System
title_sort latency to reward predicts social dominance in rats: a causal role for the dopaminergic mesolimbic system
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6460316/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31024272
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00069
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