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In animals, repeated inescapable stress induces learned helplessness, which has long served as an experimental model of depression. It is poorly appreciated that after exposure to inescapable stress, some animals regain the ability to actively cope when given a chance to escape, while others remain helpless. In an elegant series of animal studies, researchers used inescapable stress to examine the molecular mechanisms behind resilience.
In initial studies, mice had dramatically divergent responses once they could escape footshocks: Some remained persistently helpless while others showed resilience by eventually resuming their attempts to escape. On autopsy, all stressed animals had high levels of ΔFosB expressed in the ventrolateral periaque…