Drug addiction requires associative learning processes that critically involve hippocampal circuits, including the opioid system. We recently found that acute and chronic stress, important regulators of addictive processes, affect hippocampal opioid levels and mu opioid receptor trafficking in a sexually dimorphic manner. Here, we examined whether acute and chronic stress similarly alters the levels and trafficking of hippocampal delta opioid receptors (DORs). Immediately after acute immobilization stress (AIS) or one-day after chronic immobilization stress (CIS), the brains of adult female and male rats were perfusion-fixed with aldehydes. The CA3b region and the dentate hilus of the dorsal hippocampus were quantitatively analyzed by light microscopy using DOR immunoperoxidase or dual label electron microscopy for DOR using silver intensified immunogold particles (SIG) and GABA using immunoperoxidase. At baseline, females compared to males had more DORs near the plasmalemma of pyramidal cell dendrites and about 3 times more DOR-labeled CA3 dendritic spines contacted by mossy fibers. In AIS females, near-plasmalemmal DOR-SIGs decreased in GABAergic hilar dendrites. However, in AIS males, near-plasmalemmal DOR-SIGs increased in CA3 pyramidal cell and hilar GABAergic dendrites and the percentage of CA3 dendritic spines contacted by mossy fibers increased to about half that seen in unstressed females. Conversely, after CIS, near-plasmalemmal DOR-SIGs increased in hilar GABA-labeled dendrites of females whereas in males plasmalemmal DOR-SIGs decreased in CA3 pyramidal cell dendrites and near-plasmalemmal DOR-SIGs decreased hilar GABA-labeled dendrites. As CIS in females, but not males, redistributed DOR-SIGs near the plasmalemmal of hilar GABAergic dendrites, a subsequent experiment examined the acute affect of oxycodone on the redistribution of DOR-SIGs in a separate cohort of CIS females. Plasmalemmal DOR-SIGs were significantly elevated on hilar interneuron dendrites one-hour after oxycodone (3 mg/kg, I.P.) administration compared to saline administration in CIS females. These data indicate that DORs redistribute within CA3 pyramidal cells and dentate hilar GABAergic interneurons in a sexually dimorphic manner that would promote activation and drug related learning in males after AIS and in females after CIS.

Heightened fear and inefficient safety learning are key features of fear and anxiety disorders. Evidence-based interventions for anxiety disorders, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, primarily rely on mechanisms of fear extinction. However, up to 50% of clinically anxious individuals do not respond to current evidence-based treatment, suggesting a critical need for new interventions based on alternative neurobiological pathways. Using parallel human and rodent conditioned inhibition paradigms alongside brain imaging methodologies, we investigated neural activity patterns in the ventral hippocampus in response to stimuli predictive of threat or safety and compound cues to test inhibition via safety in the presence of threat. Distinct hippocampal responses to threat, safety, and compound cues suggest that the ventral hippocampus is involved in conditioned inhibition in both mice and humans. Moreover, unique response patterns within target-differentiated subpopulations of ventral hippocampal neurons identify a circuit by which fear may be inhibited via safety. Specifically, ventral hippocampal neurons projecting to the prelimbic cortex, but not to the infralimbic cortex or basolateral amygdala, were more active to safety and compound cues than threat cues, and activity correlated with freezing behavior in rodents. A corresponding distinction was observed in humans: hippocampal–dorsal anterior cingulate cortex functional connectivity—but not hippocampal–anterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex or hippocampal–basolateral amygdala connectivity—differentiated between threat, safety, and compound conditions. These findings highlight the potential to enhance treatment for anxiety disorders by targeting an alternative neural mechanism through safety signal learning.

Following an acute stressor, pre-adolescent rats exhibit a protracted hormonal response compared to adults, while after repeated exposure to the same stressor (i.e., homotypic stress) prepubertal males fail to habituate like adults. Though the neurobehavioral implications of these changes are unknown, studying pubertal shifts in stress reactivity may help elucidate the mechanisms that underlie the increase in stress-related psychological and physiological disorders often observed during adolescence. Here, we investigated hormonal, behavioral, and neural responses of prepubertal (30d) and adult (77d) male rats before, during, or after acute stress (restraint), homotypic stress (repeated restraint) or heterotypic stress (repeated cold exposure followed by restraint). We found that prepubertal males exhibit prolonged corticosterone responses following acute and heterotypic stress, and higher adrenocorticotropic hormone and corticosterone responses after homotypic stress, compared to adults. Despite these significant age-dependent changes in hormonal responsiveness, we found struggling behavior during restraint was similar at both ages, such that both prepubertal and adult animals exposed to homotypic stress struggled less than animals exposed to either acute or heterotypic stress. Across these different stress paradigms, we found greater neural activation, as indexed by FOS immunostaining, in the prepubertal compared to adult paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus, a nucleus integral for initiating the hormonal stress response. Interestingly, however, we did not find any influence of pubertal development on stress-induced activation of the posterior paraventricular thalamic nucleus, a brain region involved in experience-dependent changes in stress reactivity. Collectively, our data indicate prepubertal and adult males display divergent hormonal, behavioral, and neural responses following a variety of stressful experiences, as well as a distinct dissociation between hormonal and behavioral reactivity in prepubertal males under homotypic conditions.

Stress—especially chronic, uncontrollable stress—is an important risk factor for many neuropsychiatric disorders. The underlying mechanisms are complex and multifactorial, but they involve correlated changes in structural and functional measures of neuronal connectivity within cortical microcircuits and across neuroanatomically distributed brain networks. Here, we review evidence from animal models and human neuroimaging studies implicating stress-associated changes in functional connectivity in the pathogenesis of PTSD, depression, and other neuropsychiatric conditions. Changes in fMRI measures of corticocortical connectivity across distributed networks may be caused by specific structural alterations that have been observed in the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and other vulnerable brain regions. These effects are mediated in part by glucocorticoids, which are released from the adrenal gland in response to a stressor and also oscillate in synchrony with diurnal rhythms. Recent work indicates that circadian glucocorticoid oscillations act to balance synapse formation and pruning after learning and during development, and chronic stress disrupts this balance. We conclude by considering how disrupted glucocorticoid oscillations may contribute to the pathophysiology of depression and PTSD in vulnerable individuals, and how circadian rhythm disturbances may affect non-psychiatric populations, including frequent travelers, shift workers, and patients undergoing treatment for autoimmune disorders.

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Summary Studies have indicated significant pubertal-related differences in hormonal stress reactivity. We report here that prepubertal (30d) male rats display a more protracted stress-induced corticosterone response than adults (70d), despite showing relatively similar levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). Additionally, we show that adrenal expression of the ACTH receptor, melanocortin 2 receptor (Mc2r), is higher in prepubertal compared to adult animals, and that expression of melanocortin receptor accessory protein (Mrap), a molecule that chaperones MC2R to the cell surface, is greater in prepubertal males following stress. Given that these data suggest a pubertal shift in adrenal sensitivity to ACTH, we directly tested this possibility by injecting prepubertal and adult males with 6.25 or 9.375 μg/kg of exogenous rat ACTH and measured their hormone levels 30 and 60 min post-injection. As these doses resulted in different circulating levels of ACTH at these two ages, we performed regression analyses to assess the relationship between circulating ACTH and corticosterone concentrations. We found no difference between the ages in the correlation between ACTH and corticosterone levels at the 30 min time point. However, 60 min following the ACTH injection, we found prepubertal rats had significantly higher corticosterone concentrations at lower levels of ACTH compared to adults. These data suggest that prolonged exposure to ACTH leads to greater corticosterone responsiveness prior to puberty, and indicate that changes in adrenal sensitivity to ACTH may, in part, contribute to the protracted hormonal stress response in prepubertal rats.

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Following a variety of stressors, prepubertal animals display significantly longer hormonal stress responses than adults. Although the mechanisms that mediate this pubertal‐related difference in stress reactivity are unclear, previous studies have shown that social interactions are differentially affected by stress in animals before and after puberty. Given the influence of social factors on stress reactivity, we hypothesize the protracted stress‐induced hormonal response in prepubertal animals may be in part mediated by aspects of their poststress social environment. We explored this hypothesis by measuring plasma ACTH and corticosterone in prepubertal male rats 15, 30, and 45 min after a 30 min session of restraint stress exposed to one of three social conditions: recovering in the presence of a stressed cage mate; recovering in the presence of a nonstressed cage mate; and recovering in the absence of a cage mate. We report here that although prepubertal and adult animals display different hormonal responses following restraint, the presence or absence of stressed cage mates has little impact on the poststress hormonal response in prepubertal males. We do, however, show that social factors can alter HPA reactivity in prepubertal animals, in that significant hormonal responses are evoked in nonstressed animals exposed to a stressed cage mate, an effect not found in adults. Collectively, these data indicate that although the poststress social environment does not play a role in mediating the protracted hormonal response in prepubertal animals, the social context can significantly influence HPA activation in otherwise unstressed animals prior to puberty. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 56: 1061–1069, 2014.