Sex-and Stress-Dependent Plasticity of a Corticotropin Releasing Hormone / GABA Projection from the Basolateral Amygdala to Nucleus Accumbens that Mediates Reward Behaviors.

Background: Motivated behaviors are executed by refined brain circuits. Early-life adversity (ELA) is a risk for human affective disorders involving dysregulated reward behaviors. In mice, ELA causes anhedonia-like behaviors in males and augmented reward motivation in females, indicating sex-dependent disruption of reward circuit operations.

Stress-induced plasticity of a CRH/GABA projection disrupts reward behaviors in mice.

Disrupted operations of the reward circuit underlie major emotional disorders, including depression, which commonly arise following early life stress / adversity (ELA). However, how ELA enduringly impacts reward circuit functions remains unclear. We characterize a stress-sensitive projection connecting basolateral amygdala (BLA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) that co-expresses GABA and the stress-reactive neuropeptide corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH).