ArticleThe European journal of neuroscience2015
Effects of social defeat on dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area in male and female California mice.
Article in The European journal of neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 50 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neural basis of social hierarchy across species.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Acute and vicarious effects of social defeat stress on social behaviour in California mice,Animal behaviour · 2025Article
- The effects of different types of social interactions on the electrophysiology of neurons in the nucleus accumbens in rodents.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Leveraging the unique social organization of California mice to study circuit-specific effects of oxytocin on behavior.Hormones and behavior · 2024Review
- Gains and Losses: Resilience to Social Defeat Stress in Adolescent Female Mice.Biological psychiatry · 2024Article
- Sexual differentiation of neural mechanisms of stress sensitivity during puberty.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Sexually Dimorphic Effects of Neuromodulatory Drugs on Normal and Stress-Induced Social Interaction in Rats.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Vicarious Social Defeat Increases Conditioned Rewarding Effects of Cocaine and Ethanol Intake in Female Mice.Biomedicines · 2023Article
- Species-typical group size differentially influences social reward neural circuitry during nonreproductive social interactions.iScience · 2022Article
- Enriched laboratory housing increases sensitivity to social stress in female California mice (Applied animal behaviour science · 2021Article
- Using social rank as the lens to focus on the neural circuitry driving stress coping styles.Current opinion in neurobiology · 2021Review
- Stress-induced alterations of mesocortical and mesolimbic dopaminergic pathways.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Inactivation of Zona Incerta Blocks Social Conditioned Place Aversion and Modulates Post-traumatic Stress Disorder-Like Behaviors in Mice.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Article
- Sex-Dependent Effects of Chronic Social Defeat on Emotional and Social Behaviors, and Parameters of Oxytocin and Vasopressin Systems in Mandarin Voles (Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- Stress-related memories disrupt sociability and associated patterning of hippocampal activity: a role of hilar oxytocin receptor-positive interneurons.Translational psychiatry · 2020Article
- Can I Get a Witness? Using Vicarious Defeat Stress to Study Mood-Related Illnesses in Traditionally Understudied Populations.Biological psychiatry · 2020Review
- Non-pharmacological factors that determine drug use and addiction.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2020Review
- Neonatal Nicotine Exposure Primes Midbrain Neurons to a Dopaminergic Phenotype and Increases Adult Drug Consumption.Biological psychiatry · 2019Article
- Complementary Neural Circuits for Divergent Effects of Oxytocin: Social Approach Versus Social Anxiety.Biological psychiatry · 2019Review
- Serotonin Signaling Trough Prelimbic 5-HT1A Receptors Modulates CSDS-Induced Behavioral Changes in Adult Female Voles.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) have important functions related to rewards but are also activated in aversive contexts. Electrophysiology studies suggest that the degree to which VTA dopamine neurons respond to noxious stimuli is topographically organized across the dorsal-ventral extent. We used c-fos immunohistochemistry to examine the responses of VTA dopamine neurons in contexts of social defeat and social approach. Studying monogamous California mice (Peromyscus californicus) allowed us to observe the effects of social defeat on both males and females. Females exposed to three episodes of defeat, but not a single episode, had more tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)/c-fos-positive cells in the ventral (but not dorsal) VTA compared with controls. This observation suggests that repeated exposure to aversive contexts is necessary to trigger activation of VTA dopamine neurons. Defeat did not affect TH/c-fos colocalizations in males. We also examined the long-term effects of defeat on c-fos expression in a social interaction test. As previously reported, defeat reduced social interaction in females but not males. Surprisingly, there were no effects of defeat stress on TH/c-fos colocalizations in any subregion of the VTA. However, females had more TH/c-fos-positive cells than males across the entire VTA, and also had greater c-fos-positive cell counts in posterior subregions of the nucleus accumbens shell. Our results show that dopamine neurons in the VTA are more responsive to social contexts in females and that the ventral VTA in particular is sensitive to aversive contexts.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.