The socially enriched environment test: a new approach to evaluate social behavior in a mouse model of social anxiety disorder.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common anxiety disorder characterized by a marked fear of social situations. Treatments for SAD, including exposure therapy and medication, are not satisfactory for all patients. This has led to the development of several paradigms to study social fear in rodents.

Repeated ethanol exposure following avoidance conditioning impairs avoidance extinction and modifies conditioning-associated prefrontal dendritic changes in a mouse model of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder is complicated by the presence of alcohol use disorder comorbidity. Little is known about the underlying brain mechanisms. We have recently shown, in mice, that the post-traumatic stress disorder-like phenotype is characterised by the increase and decrease in total dendritic number and length in the prelimbic and infralimbic areas of the medial prefrontal cortex, respectively.