Early Life Stress in Rodents: Animal Models of Illness or Resilience?

• Published in: Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience 2018-07, Vol.12, p.157-157
• Main Authors: Murthy, Sahana, Gould, Elizabeth
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal behavior; Animal models; Anxiety; Child abuse & neglect; Children; depression; early life stress; Manipulation; Mood; Neurobiology; Neuroscience; Neurosciences; Researchers; resilience; rodent models; Rodents; Statistical analysis; Validity
• ISSN: 1662-5153; 1662-5153
• DOI: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00157

Ethical constraints on conducting studies with humans have highlighted the need for reliable and robust animal models that researchers can utilize to identify relevant neurobiological processes (Guzman et al., 2016). Since the work of Harlow and colleagues beginning in the 1940s, which involved raising infant macaques with cloth and wire mothers (reviewed in van der Horst and van der Veer, 2008), researchers have sought to develop useful animal models of early life adversity. The type of human maltreatment that rodent maternal separation reflects might be important for establishing its translational validity, since human studies have separated early adverse experiences into several categories, including emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical abuse, physical neglect and sexual abuse (Kendler et al., 2004; van Harmelen et al., 2010; Young and Widom, 2014; Rehan et al., 2017; Gallo et al., 2018) and some studies suggest that the type of maltreatment may be important for the adult outcome in terms of behavioral dysfunction (Huh et al., 2014; Young and Widom, 2014). Human studies have clearly shown genetic predisposition to mood and anxiety disorders and it follows that this factor should be considered in studies using experimental animals to model the human condition. [...]the sex of the animal should be considered.