Chronic stress during adolescence is associated with an increased risk for alcoholism and addictive disorders. Addiction is also associated with increased impulsivity, and stress during adolescence could alter cortical circuits responsible for response inhibition.
Therefore, the present study determined the effect of chronic exposure to the stress hormone corticosterone (CORT) during adolescence on tests of impulsivity in adulthood and examined possible biochemical mechanisms.
Male Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to CORT by their drinking water during adolescence (post-natal day 30–50). The rats were then tested in adulthood to assess behavior on the 5-choice serial reaction time task (5CSRTT), stop-signal reaction time task (SSRTT), and the delay-discounting task, which differentially assess attention, impulsive action, and impulsive choice. Yohimbine-induced impulsivity on the 5CSRTT and biochemical analysis of the lateral orbital frontal cortex (lOFC) was also assessed owing to the ability of yohimbine to activate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and influence impulsivity.
Adolescent CORT-treated rats were found to behave largely like controls on the 5CSRTT, but did show reduced premature responses when the intertrial interval was increased
Nevertheless, the CORT-treated rats tended to have more yohimbine-induced impulsive responses at low doses on this task, which was not found to be due to increased pCREB in the lOFC, but could be related to a higher expression/activity of the AMPA receptor subunit GluR1.
Adolescent CORT-treated rats performed more accurately on the SSRTT, but showed greater impulsivity on the delay-discounting task, as indicated by steeper discounting functions.
Therefore, adolescent CORT exposure reduced impulsive action but increased impulsive choice, indicating that chronic stress hormone exposure in adolescence can have long-term consequences on behavior.
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