Limited nesting and bedding model

Question 1

What conditions does the limited nesting and bedding model study?

Answer 1

Anxiety and mood disorders

Question 2

What specifically does the limited nesting and bedding model study?

Answer 2

Early life stress

How can stress affect:
* emotional development
* stress regulation
Vulnerability to anxiety/mood disorders later in life

Question 3

How does the limited nesting and bedding model work?

Answer 3

• reduced nesting material in cage changes mothers caregiving behaviour
• unpredictable and fregmented early life environemtns for pups
• simulates effects of early life adversity

Question 4

What is the strength of face validity in the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 4

1. Strong

Question 5

What is the strength of construct validity in the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 5

2.Robust

Question 6

What is the strength of predictive validity in the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 6

3.Emerging

Question 7

What are the face validity features in the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 7

• Offspring display behaviour of human stres-related disorders - early onset anxiety, depression like bhaviours, PTSD, cognitive impairments
• Display reduced interest in social activity, avoidance of new environments

Question 8

What are the construct validity features in the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 8

Model includes early life adversity
* known risk factor for psychiatric conditions
* Mirrors human psychopathology environmental stressors

During maternal stress:
* release corticosterone similar to cortisol in humans

Evidence of HPA axis dysregulation:
* high levels of glucocoticoids
* higher levels of croticosterone
* higher/lower levels of cortisol

Question 9

What are the predictive validity features in the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 9

SOME interventions that alleviate symptoms in humans reverse behavioral/neurobiological changes in animals > more research needed

SSRIs used to treat anxiety in humans soemtimes having differing effects on rats
* e.g. producing anxiety symptoms

Question 10

What are the strengths of the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 10

• mimics limited resources such as socioeconomic households
• Rats with Chronic ELS had symptoms/depression reversed with Fluoxetine (prozac)

Question 11

What are the limitations of the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 11

• In isolation missing other factors that affect early life stress
• No way to measure internal exerience (e.g. rumination, flashbacks)
• Conflating conditions hard to account for e.g. cognitive impairments caused by injury or genetics
• Human studies largly correlational, limited access to tissue, intergenetional effects
• Different studies use different amounts of observational times leading to inconsistent results
• Other things could affect the pups, smells, room temp etc
• Few intervetnions tested across labs

Question 12

What are some suggestions for the limited nesting and bedding model?

Answer 12

• test other environments and medications that may improve stress > greater translation
• Features like sex, diet and strain of rat should be accounted for as they have been shown to alter results
• The antidepressants used in studies have only be studied in isolation not comparitively, this should be studied
• further replicate