Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Passive Coping Strategies During Repeated Social Defeat Are Associated With Long-Lasting Changes In Sleep In Rats, Laura A. Grafe, Lauren O’Mara, Anna Branch, Jane Dobkin, Sandra Luz, Abigail Vigderman, Aakash Shingala, Leszek Kubin, Richard Ross, Seema Bhatnagar

Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Exposure to severe stress has immediate and prolonged neuropsychiatric consequences and increases the risk of developing Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Importantly, PTSD develops in only a subset of individuals after exposure to a traumatic event, with the understanding of this selective vulnerability being very limited. Individuals who go on to develop PTSD after a traumatic experience typically demonstrate sleep disturbances including persistent insomnia and recurrent trauma-related nightmares. We previously established a repeated social defeat paradigm in which rats segregate into either passively or actively coping subpopulations, and we found that this distinction correlates with measures of vulnerability or resilience to …