Fear circuit-based neurobehavioral signatures mirror resilience to chronic social stress in mouse.

Abstract

Consistent evidence from human data points to successful threat-safety discrimination and responsiveness to extinction of fear memories as key characteristics of resilient individuals. To promote valid cross-species approaches for the identification of resilience mechanisms, we establish a translationally informed mouse model enabling the stratification of mice into three phenotypic subgroups following chronic social defeat stress, based on their individual ability for threat-safety discrimination and conditioned learning: the <i>Discriminating-avoiders</i>, characterized by successful social threat-safety discrimination and extinction of social aversive memories; the <i>Indiscriminate-avoiders</i>, showing aversive response generalization and resistance to extinction, in line with findings on susceptible individuals; and the <i>Non-avoiders</i> displaying impaired aversive conditioned learning. To explore the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the stratification, we perform transcriptome analysis within three key target regions of the fear circuitry. We identify subgroup-specific differentially expressed genes and gene networks underlying the behavioral phenotypes, i.e., the individual ability to show threat-safety discrimination and respond to extinction training. Our approach provides a translationally informed template with which to characterize the behavioral, molecular, and circuit bases of resilience in mice.