Male and female mice respectively form stronger social aversive memories with same and different sex conspecifics.

Mice offer a wealth of opportunities for investigating brain circuits regulating multiple behaviors, largely due to their genetic tractability. Social behaviors are of translational relevance, considering both mice and humans are highly social mammals, and disruptions in human social behavior are key symptoms of myriad neuropsychiatric disorders. Stresses related to social experiences are particularly influential in the severity and maintenance of neuropsychiatric disorders like anxiety disorders, and trauma and stressor-related disorders.

Corticosterone after early adolescent stress prevents social avoidance, aversive behavior, and morphine-conditioned place preference in adulthood.

Rationale: Stress during childhood or adolescence increases vulnerability to psychiatric disorders in adults. In adult rodents, the delayed effects of stress can increase anxiety-like behavior. These effects, however, can be prevented with post-stress administration of corticosterone (CORT).

Heterotypic Stressors Unmask Behavioral Influences of PMAT Deficiency in Mice.

Certain life stressors having enduring physiological and behavioral consequences, in part by eliciting dramatic signaling shifts in monoamine neurotransmitters. High monoamine levels can overwhelm selective transporters like the serotonin transporter. This is when polyspecific transporters like plasma membrane monoamine transporter (PMAT, ) are hypothesized to contribute most to monoaminergic signaling regulation.

Heterotypic stressors unmask behavioral influences of PMAT deficiency in mice.

Certain life stressors having enduring physiological and behavioral consequences, in part by eliciting dramatic signaling shifts in monoamine neurotransmitters. High monoamine levels can overwhelm selective transporters like the serotonin transporter. This is when polyspecific transporters like plasma membrane monoamine transporter (PMAT, Slc29a4) are hypothesized to contribute most to monoaminergic signaling regulation.

Summarizing studies using constitutive genetic deficiency to investigate behavioural influences of uptake 2 monoamine transporters.

Burgeoning literature demonstrates that monoamine transporters with high transport capacity but lower substrate affinity (i.e., uptake 2) contribute meaningfully to regulation of monoamine neurotransmitter signalling.

Uncovering Functional Contributions of PMAT () to Monoamine Clearance Using Pharmacobehavioral Tools.

Plasma membrane monoamine transporter (PMAT, Slc29a4) transports monoamine neurotransmitters, including dopamine and serotonin, faster than more studied monoamine transporters, e.g., dopamine transporter (DAT), or serotonin transporter (SERT), but with ~400-600-fold less affinity.

Anxiety and stress over COVID-19 pandemic associated with increased eating.

Objective: Stressful experiences can dramatically affect eating. The relatively sudden, global emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic served as a massive stressor to virtually all people, regardless of infection status. This study hypothesized that actual and perceived stressors from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the categories of recurring disruptions, environmental threat, and social isolation would be positively associated with increased self-reported eating in the United States.

Salt as a non-caloric behavioral modifier: A review of evidence from pre-clinical studies.

Though excess salt intake is well-accepted as a dietary risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, relatively little has been explored about how it impacts behavior, despite the ubiquity of salt in modern diets. Given the challenges of manipulating salt intake in humans, non-human animals provide a more tractable means for evaluating behavioral sequelae of high salt. By describing what is known about the impact of elevated salt on behavior, this review highlights how underexplored salt's behavioral effects are.