| First Author | Shan Q | Year | 2023 |
| Journal | Cereb Cortex | Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 5 | Pages | 1595-1609 |
| PubMed ID | 35524719 | Mgi Jnum | J:361308 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:7857070 | Doi | 10.1093/cercor/bhac158 |
| Citation | Shan Q, et al. (2023) Adolescent social isolation shifts the balance of decision-making strategy from goal-directed action to habitual response in adulthood via suppressing the excitatory neurotransmission onto the direct pathway of the dorsomedial striatum. Cereb Cortex 33(5):1595-1609 |
| abstractText | Adverse experience, such as social isolation, during adolescence is one of the major causes of neuropsychiatric disorders that extend from adolescence into adulthood, such as substance addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and eating disorders leading to obesity. A common behavioral feature of these neuropsychiatric disorders is a shift in the balance of decision-making strategy from goal-directed action to habitual response. This study has verified that adolescent social isolation directly shifts the balance of decision-making strategy from goal-directed action to habitual response, and that it cannot be reversed by simple regrouping. This study has further revealed that adolescent social isolation induces a suppression in the excitatory neurotransmission onto the direct-pathway medium spiny neurons of the dorsomedial striatum (DMS), and that chemogenetically compensating this suppression effect shifts the balance of decision-making strategy from habitual response back to goal-directed action. These findings suggest that the plasticity in the DMS causes the shift in the balance of decision-making strategy, which would potentially help to develop a general therapy to treat the various neuropsychiatric disorders caused by adolescent social isolation. Such a study is especially necessary under the circumstances that social distancing and lockdown have caused during times of world-wide, society-wide pandemic. |
