Abstract
Stress inoculation entails intermittent exposure to mildly stressful situations that present opportunities to learn, practice and improve coping in the context of exposure psychotherapies and resiliency training. Here we investigate behavioral and hormonal aspects of stress inoculation modeled in mice. Mice randomized to stress inoculation or a control treatment condition were assessed for corticosterone stress hormone responses and behavior during open-field, object-exploration and tail-suspension tests. Stress inoculation training sessions that acutely increased plasma levels of corticosterone diminished subsequent immobility as a measure of behavioral despair on tail-suspension tests. Stress inoculation also decreased subsequent freezing in the open field despite comparable levels of thigmotaxis in mice from both treatment conditions. Stress inoculation subsequently decreased novel-object exploration latencies and reduced corticosterone responses to repeated restraint. These results demonstrate that stress inoculation acutely stimulates glucocorticoid signaling and then enhances subsequent indications of active coping behavior in mice. Unlike mouse models that screen for the absence of vulnerability to stress or presence of traits that occur in resilient individuals, stress inoculation training reflects an experience-dependent learning-like process that resembles interventions designed to build resilience in humans. Mouse models of stress inoculation may provide novel insights for new preventive strategies or therapeutic treatments of human psychiatric disorders that are triggered and exacerbated by stressful life events.
Highlights
Stress inoculation is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that involves intermittent exposure to mildly stressful situations for people who work in conditions where performance in the face of adversity is required, for example, medical and military personnel, police, firefighters and rescue workers.[1,2,3]
Stress inoculation training sessions and exposure psychotherapies are generally administered by psychologists and psychiatrists, but these interventions build on conditions that appear to spontaneously occur without instruction or guidance.[7,8,9]
Agematched mice maintained in the same conditions but randomized to stress inoculation training sessions were exposed to a standard social stress protocol developed by other investigators[20] and modified as follows
Summary
Stress inoculation is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that involves intermittent exposure to mildly stressful situations for people who work in conditions where performance in the face of adversity is required, for example, medical and military personnel, police, firefighters and rescue workers.[1,2,3] Exposure psychotherapies likewise train patients to imagine a graded series of stressinducing situations and encourage interaction with stressors in vivo.[4]. Stress inoculation training sessions and exposure psychotherapies are generally administered by psychologists and psychiatrists, but these interventions build on conditions that appear to spontaneously occur without instruction or guidance.[7,8,9] Mild stress exposure in childhood has been linked to lower subsequent levels of state anxiety[10] and smaller increases in salivary cortisol responses to laboratory-based psychological stressors.[11,12] Prior mildly stressful experiences diminish emotional distress in workplace conditions[13] and decrease cardiovascular responses to stressful laboratory tests.[14] These results indicate that mild but not minimal nor severe stress exposure promotes subsequent coping and emotion regulation as described by U-shaped functions.[15,16,17]. We test the hypothesis that stress inoculation training acutely stimulates glucocorticoid signaling and enhances subsequent indications of resilience in mice
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