A new research shows that unpredictable stress during adolescence may help us deal with future challenges more efficiently. In experiments, the researchers found that rats exposed to frequent physical, social, and predatory stress during adolescence solved problems and foraged more efficiently under high-threat conditions in adulthood compared with rats that developed without stress.
The results may provide insights into how humans respond to adolescent stress, the researchers said.
They turned to rats to investigate the effects of maltreatment during adolescence because it is unethical to manipulate stress in humans and rats have a short lifespan, allowing them to study long-term effects more efficiently.
For the study, Lauren Chaby from Pennsylvania State University exposed adolescent rats to a range of unpredictable stressors, including smaller or tilted cages, social isolation or crowding, and predator scents or vocalizations.
The researchers then tested adult animals to see if there were lasting effects of stress in adolescence.
"We wanted to test them in conditions that were consistent with their rearing conditions to see if that impacted their ability to solve tasks," Chaby said.
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Adult rats then manipulated a variety of novel objects to obtain food rewards.
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These statistically significant results suggest that growing up in a stressful environment can prepare rats for a stressful, high-predation environment in the future.
Chaby hopes that studies like this can help direct how we study adolescent stress in humans.
The results were published in the journal Animal Behavior.
Source-IANS