Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Francisco Elías Moreno | Email: Francisco.elias.moreno@mi.unc.edu.ar
Francisco Elías Moreno1°2°, Martina Ramires1°2°, Vittorelli Franco Antonio1°2°, Gastón Diego Calfa1°2°, Crhistian Luis Bender
1° Instituto de Farmacología Experimental de Córdoba – CONICET. Facultad de Ciencias Químicas
2° Departamento de Farmacología Otto Orsingher, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina
Modeling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is challenging. Over the past decades, preclinical research in PTSD has increased, but its results have not yielded new and effective therapies. In the quest to improve translational power, refinement of animal models is needed. For this purpose, the classification of stressed animals into behavioral profiles of “vulnerability” and “resilience” has emerged as an important advance, recognizing that stressful experiences are necessary but not sufficient to induce pathological states. Importantly, distinctive neurobiological mechanisms have been associated with these profiles. This perspective, however, presents new theoretical and methodological problems that require better argumentation of the criteria and tests that have been used to identify behavioral profiles.
In order to synthesize the classification variants, their problems, and possible solutions, a systematic and critical review of the methodologies used was performed. The PubMed database was used to identify articles with explicit interest in studying PTSD using rodents and behavioral profiling (128 articles were found that met this criterion). In addition, we employed the single prolonged stress model, a widely used animal model in PTSD research, in order to apply and propose a suitable classification methodology for this paradigm. For behavioral profiling, anxiety tests and contextual fear memory assessments were used in adult male Wistar rats and C57BL/6 mice.