Generalization of contextual fear is sex-specifically affected by high salt intake.

Autor: Beaver JN; Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.; Brain Health Research Institute, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America., Weber BL; Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.; Brain Health Research Institute, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America., Ford MT; Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America., Anello AE; Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.; Brain Health Research Institute, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America., Ruffin KM; Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America., Kassis SK; Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.; Brain Health Research Institute, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America., Gilman TL; Department of Psychological Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.; Brain Health Research Institute, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.; Healthy Communities Research Institute, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2023 Jul 13; Vol. 18 (7), pp. e0286221. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Jul 13 (Print Publication: 2023).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286221
Abstrakt: A hallmark symptom of many anxiety disorders, and multiple neuropsychiatric disorders more broadly, is generalization of fearful responses to non-fearful stimuli. Anxiety disorders are often comorbid with cardiovascular diseases. One established, and modifiable, risk factor for cardiovascular diseases is salt intake. Yet, investigations into how excess salt consumption affects anxiety-relevant behaviors remains little explored. Moreover, no studies have yet assessed how high salt intake influences generalization of fear. Here, we used adult C57BL/6J mice of both sexes to evaluate the influence of two or six weeks of high salt consumption (4.0% NaCl), compared to controls (0.4% NaCl), on contextual fear acquisition, expression, and generalization. Further, we measured osmotic and physiological stress by quantifying serum osmolality and corticosterone levels, respectively. Consuming excess salt did not influence contextual fear acquisition nor discrimination between the context used for training and a novel, neutral context when training occurred 48 prior to testing. However, when a four week delay between training and testing was employed to induce natural fear generalization processes, we found that high salt intake selectively increases contextual fear generalization in females, but the same diet reduces contextual fear generalization in males. These sex-specific effects were independent of any changes in serum osmolality nor corticosterone levels, suggesting the behavioral shifts are a consequence of more subtle, neurophysiologic changes. This is the first evidence of salt consumption influencing contextual fear generalization, and adds information about sex-specific effects of salt that are largely missing from current literature.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Beaver et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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