Cited by 47Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on BehaviorStress Responses and CortisolMemory and Neural Mechanisms

Adolescent social defeat decreases spatial working memory performance in adulthood

Open access
Novick, Andrew M, Miiller, Leah C, Forster, Gina L, Watt, Michael J·2013·Behavioral and Brain Functions

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Adolescent social stress is associated with increased incidence of mental illnesses in adulthood that are characterized by deficits in cognitive focus and flexibility. Such enhanced vulnerability may be due to psychosocial stress-induced disruption of the developing mesocortical dopamine system, which plays a fundamental role in facilitating complex cognitive processes such as spatial working memory. Adolescent rats exposed to repeated social defeat as a model of social stress develop dopaminergic hypofunction in the medial prefrontal cortex as adults. To evaluate a direct link between adolescent social stress and later deficits in cognitive function, the present study tested the effects of adolescent social defeat on two separate tests of spatial working memory performance. METHODS: Adult rats exposed to adolescent social defeat and their controls were trained on either the delayed win-shift task or the delayed alternating T-Maze task and then challenged with various delay periods. To evaluate potential differences in motivation for the food reward used in memory tasks, consumption and conditioned place preference for sweetened condensed milk were tested in a separate cohort of previously defeated rats and controls. RESULTS: Compared to controls, adult rats defeated in adolescence showed a delay-dependent deficit in spatial working memory performance, committing more errors at a 90 s and 5 min delay period on the T-maze and win-shift tasks, respectively. Observed memory deficits were likely independent of differences in reward motivation, as conditioned place preference for the palatable food used on both tasks was similar between the adolescent social defeat group and control. CONCLUSIONS: The results demonstrate that severe social stressors during adolescence can produce long term deficits in aspects of cognitive function. Given the dependence of spatial working memory on prefrontal dopamine, pharmacologically reversing dopaminergic deficiencies caused by adolescent social stress has the potential to treat such cognitive deficits.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1186/1744-9081-9-39

Cites

66 of 66 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Adolescent female rats given variable stressors later consume less sucrose, whereas males do not.

    “there is some indication that female rats exposed to variable stressors in adolescence (restraint, social defeat) demonstrate subsequent deficits in sucrose consumption (Bourke and Neigh, 2011; Pohl et al., 2007) while male animals do not (Bourke and Neigh, 2011; Novick et al., 2013; Pohl et al., 2007; Toth et al., 2008).”

    From The effects of early life stress on reward processing (2018) · cites this paper as Novick et al., 2013

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Novick, A. M., Miiller, L. C., Forster, G. L., & Watt, M. J.
Affiliations
University of South Dakota (US)
Corresponding author
Watt, Michael J
Venue
Behavioral and Brain Functions
Published
2013-10-17
Volume
9
Issue
1
Pages
39-39
ISSN
1744-9081 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2134835298
Cited by
47
References
65
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 1
FWCI
3.59
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Behavioral and Brain Functions (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • National Science Foundation (1257679)
  • National Institutes of Health
  • National Institute on Drug Abuse (RO1 DA019921, R01DA019921, DA019921)
  • National Center for Research Resources (P20RR015567)
  • Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (1257679)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Keywords
social stress, spatial working memory, mesocortical dopamine system, medial prefrontal cortex, reward motivation, conditioned place preference, cognitive impairment, long-term stress effects
MeSH terms
Age Factors, Animals, Conditioning, Psychological, Disease Models, Animal, Dominance-Subordination, Dopamine, Memory, Short-Term, Mesencephalon, Reward, Sexual Maturation, Social Behavior, Space Perception, Stress, Psychological, Rats, Sprague-Dawley, Prefrontal Cortex, Maze Learning, Rats

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review