Adolescent and adult stress alter excitatory-inhibitory network dynamics in the medial prefrontal cortex
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Stress is a major risk factor for psychiatric disorders, with the timing of exposure critically shaping its neural and behavioral consequences. Here, we investigated how stress during adolescence or adulthood affects neuronal activity and oscillatory dynamics in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of rats. Animals were exposed to a combined footshock and restraint stress protocol during adolescence (postnatal days [PNDs] 31 to 40) or adulthood (PNDs 65 to 74). In vivo electrophysiological recordings of putative glutamate pyramidal neurons, Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) interneurons, and local field potentials were performed 1 to 2 and 5 to 6 wk post-stress to evaluate both short- and long-term effects. Adolescent stress induced increases in pyramidal neuron firing rates and sustained elevations in interneuron burst activity that persisted into adulthood, accompanied by long-lasting reductions in mPFC gamma oscillations. These alterations point to enduring disruptions in excitatory-inhibitory balance and impaired network coordination. In contrast, adult stress produced no persistent changes in pyramidal neuron activity but caused transient increases in interneuron excitability and selective reductions in theta oscillatory power, suggesting temporary inhibitory dysfunction. These findings highlight adolescence as a critical window during which stress triggers enduring, cell-type-specific changes in cortical circuitry, whereas changes induced by adult stress are transient, potentially reflecting recovery mechanisms. Collectively, our results underscore the importance of developmental timing in determining stress outcomes, providing mechanistic insight into how adolescent stress may contribute to long-lasting cortical dysfunction and psychiatric disease risk, and informing the timing of potential preventive or therapeutic interventions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| 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 teacher head, 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".