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Investigating The Influence Of Stress On Motivational Dysfunction In Male And Female Rodents, Emily Laine Errante

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Motivational dysfunction is present in a variety of disorders, including major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and Parkinsonism and can negatively impact social functioning, employment, and treatment response. Interestingly, outside stressors and stress hormones have been shown to contribute to depressive episodes in humans and depressive-like behaviors in rodents, including reducing motivated behaviors. Effort-related decision making procedures have been utilized in both humans and animals in order to examine motivational dysfunction, as it offers a subject a choice between high effort/reward and low effort/reward options, but little research has examined the effects of stress on effort-related decision making behaviors. Moreover, almost all …