Corticosterone regulates the balance between freezing and rearing in defensive responses to predator threat
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The hormonal stress response critically shapes how animals respond to threats. We examined how corticosterone (CORT) synthesis modulates defensive behaviors in mice exposed to the synthetic predator odor 2,4,5-trimethylthiazoline (TMT). Pharmacological inhibition of CORT synthesis using metyrapone reduced freezing and increased rearing during TMT exposure, without impairing threat recognition-evidenced by robust conditioned place aversion and context-specific freezing. We also found that freezing increased upon repeated TMT exposure, but this effect was blunted when CORT synthesis was blocked during the initial encounter. Furthermore, stress priming via restraint or footshock replicated the effects of prior TMT exposure, enhancing freezing and suppressing rearing. These findings suggest that while recognition of TMT's aversiveness remains intact without CORT, this hormone is essential for determining the qualitative and temporal dynamics of defensive responses. Our results reveal a key role for CORT in shaping behavioral flexibility during threat perception.
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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) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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".