Prairie voles display signs of human-like depression, show promise as animal model

Psychology researchers at The College of Texas at El Paso are making progress in direction of understanding the organic underpinnings of melancholy, a number one explanation for incapacity that impacts roughly 280 million folks around the globe.

In a study revealed this April within the Journal of Affective Problems, UTEP psychologist Sergio Iñiguez, Ph.D., and his co-authors make the case that prairie voles, small rodents which can be discovered all through the central United States and Canada, may be successfully used as animal fashions to additional the examine of medical depression.

“The findings of this investigation are essential as a result of we present, for the primary time, that prairie voles show a number of the core signs of melancholy after continual stress publicity—identical to people,” Iñiguez mentioned. “That is thrilling as a result of we will now use this animal model to probably uncover the biological factors that underlie diseases like melancholy and nervousness.”

The UTEP examine focuses on the impression of “bullying” on voles’ behavioral patterns. Researchers noticed what occurred when particular person male voles had been bullied by extra aggressive males over the course of ten days, inducing what Iñiguez refers to as “social defeat stress.”

Iñiguez defined that that the voles who had been bullied exhibited adjustments in physique weight, carried out worse on spatial reminiscence checks and had been much less sociable with different voles in comparison with those that weren’t bullied. The place voles usually present a desire for sugar water, the bullied voles confirmed no desire when given a alternative between common water and sugar water, a sample generally known as anhedonia, or lack of pleasure in common actions, Iñiguez mentioned.

Iñiguez and his fellow researchers concluded that “social defeat” activated the voles’ stress response and have become a danger issue for signs that mirrored these of melancholy in people.

Iñiguez, a professor within the Division of Psychology at UTEP who research behavioral neuroscience, mentioned that whereas melancholy has sure defining traits—corresponding to disappointment, lack of delight in regular actions, and disruption in sleep and consuming patterns—researchers do not but have a full image of what causes it.

“We now have some details about the various elements that contribute to melancholy, however the moral implications of doing neurobiological analysis in people make it tough to pinpoint the biology behind this debilitating situation,” Iñiguez mentioned.

Rats and mice are sometimes utilized in psychology research, however prairie voles share a number of distinctive traits with people that make them higher candidates for analysis, corresponding to having monogamous relationships, elevating vole pups in pairs, and even taking up parental roles for orphaned pups.

Psychology doctoral scholar Minerva Rodriguez is the lead writer of the examine.

“These distinctive and particular animals have opened doorways to understanding elements of melancholy we merely couldn’t with mice and rats,” Rodriguez mentioned. “Their distinct social behaviors present contemporary analysis avenues, demonstrating the prairie vole’s immense worth as a mannequin for delving into the neurobiology of social stress-induced melancholy.”

Future research will look at how the voles rebound from depression-like experiences and the way they reply to antidepressant drugs like Prozac or ketamine.