Stress-Induced Alterations in Prefrontal Cortical Dendritic Morphology Predict Selective Impairments in Perceptual Attentional Set-Shifting

Stressful life events have been implicated clinically in the pathogenesis of mental illness, but the neural substrates that may account for this observation remain poorly understood. Attentional impairments symptomatic of these psychiatric conditions are associated with structural and functional abnormalities in a network of prefrontal cortical structures. Here, we examine whether chronic stress-induced dendritic alterations in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and orbital frontal cortex (OFC) underlie impairments in the behaviors that they subserve. After 21 d of repeated restraint stress, rats were tested on a perceptual attentional set-shifting task, which yields dissociable measures of reversal learning…

• WM
  W. M. Keck Foundation
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: GM 07739, MH58911, MH 41256
• NI
  National Institute of Mental Health

  Award: MH58911