Acute restraint stress alters food-foraging behavior in rats: Taking the easier Way while suffered

Stress can influence decision-making in humans from many cognitive perspectives, while the underlying neurobiological mechanism remains incompletely understood. Food-foraging is a rodent behavior involving strategic possessing of nutritional supply in social context; experimental model of this behavior could help explore the effect of stress on decision-making and the brain mechanism thereof. In the present study, the influence of stress on food-foraging behavior was assessed in rats using an open field choosing paradigm wherein food collection (standard food or sweet food) were associated with social competition (with or without a rat in the cage). Acute restraint stress (ARS) was induced by placing the rat in a plastic restrainer for 2 h before food-foraging behavioral tests, with the effect of stress also determined biochemically and immunohistochemically. Restraint stressed rats showed anxiety-like behavior and elevation of serum corticosterone (CORT) and epinephrine (EPI) relative to controls. Both restraint and control animals preferred sugared food. However, the former group tended to forage food from a cage not occupied by a conspecific rat, whereas the control rats preferred to obtain food from the cage with a social competitor. Thus, the total amount of food foraged and eaten are reduced in the restrained rats than in controls. While the restraint animals had normal social interaction with other rats, they displayed enhanced social agonistic behavior. In brain examination, ARS attenuated the increase in immunolabeling and protein levels of c-fos, p-CREB, p-ERK1/2 in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) observed in control animals in association with food-foraging. These results indicate that restraint stressed rats tend to forage food by taking the advantage of a less competitive opportunity. Mechanistically, this decision-making alternative appears to be mediated through a neuronal deactivation in the ACC. The current findings provide novel insights into neuronal processing of decision-making behavior under the influence of stress.