The effect of chronic stress and chronic alcohol intake on behavior, brain structure, and functional connectivity in a rat model
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Pathological chronic stress is stress exceeding the organism’s ability to cope physiologically, which may act as a risk factor in the onset and relapse of alcohol use disorder. Chronic- restraint stress (CRS) and ethanol intake are independently known to induce changes in brain structure and function, however, their combined effects on neurodevelopment over long periods of time remains largely unexplored. We conducted an in vivo longitudinal rat model with three main goals. 1) to determine if chronic stress increases ethanol intake; 2) to determine the effect of chronic- stress and ethanol intake in behavioral measures, brain structure, and function; and 3) to investigate the effect of sex. This observational study included Wistar rats assigned to four groups: 1) ethanol consumption (EtOH+/CRS-), 2) stress exposure (EtOH-/CRS+), 3) both ethanol and stress exposure (EtOH+/CRS+), and 4) control group (EtOH-/CRS-). Our results showed that chronic stress did not affect ethanol intake but led to reduced body weight gain, elevated corticosterone levels, and impaired recognition memory. Structural MRI revealed that both exposures produced additive brain volume changes in regions such as the olfactory bulb, orbitofrontal cortex, caudate-putamen, hippocampus, and cerebellum. Functional connectivity analysis using network-based statistics identified disrupted cortical-subcortical connections. Results found here were sex-dependent in terms of volumetric changes (higher effects on males) and functional connectivity (higher effects on females). Findings suggest sex-dependent mechanisms where both chronic- ethanol intake and stress affect brain plasticity during neurodevelopment. Understanding these region-specific vulnerabilities is crucial for addressing alcohol use disorders and stress-related neuropathology. Graphical abstract Created with bioRender
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".