Sex Differences in Serotonin 5-HT 1A Receptor Responses to Repeated Restraint Stress in Adult Male and Female Rats.

Background: Male and female rats were exposed to repeated restraint to determine how changes in serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5-HT) 1A receptors associate with stress hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis habituation.

Methods: In response to 2-hour episodes of restraint, repeated daily for 5 consecutive days, males and females displayed reliable declines in HPA output, indicated by diminished adrenocorticotropin and corticosterone secretory responses. Using the 5-HT 1A receptor agonist 8-hydroxy-2-(di-n-propylamino)tetralin (8-OH-DPAT) as a pharmacological challenge for inducing hypothermia and elevations in plasma corticosterone, males displayed sensitized hypothermal responses after repeated restraint, whereas corticosterone responses to 8-OH-DPAT were enhanced in both sexes following single or repeated exposure.

Digital Health Interventions for Delivery of Mental Health Care: Systematic and Comprehensive Meta-Review.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted mental health care delivery to digital platforms, videoconferencing, and other mobile communications. However, existing reviews of digital health interventions are narrow in scope and focus on a limited number of mental health conditions.

Objective: To address this gap, we conducted a comprehensive systematic meta-review of the literature to assess the state of digital health interventions for the treatment of mental health conditions.

Cellular and serotonergic correlates of habituated neuroendocrine responses in male and female rats.

Male and females appear equally capable of showing habituated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis output responses to repeated exposures of the same challenge. Whether this reflects, within males and females, common mechanisms of decreased neuronal activity within stress responding, afferents to the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus (PVH), the final common pathway to the HPA axis, has not been examined. Here we compared in adult male and female rats the extent to which declines in HPA axis responses to repeated restraint are met by habituated cellular (Fos) responses, in addition to changes in serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5-HT) expression and signaling, which normally stimulates the HPA axis.