Heightened lateral habenula activity during stress produces brainwide and behavioral substrates of susceptibility

Abstract

Some individuals are susceptible to the experience of chronic stress and others are more resilient. While many brain regions implicated in learning are dysregulated after stress, little is known about whether and how neural teaching signals during stress differ between susceptible and resilient individuals. Here, we seek to determine if activity in the lateral habenula (LHb), which encodes a negative teaching signal, differs between susceptible and resilient mice during stress to produce different outcomes. After, but not before, chronic social defeat stress (CSDS), the LHb is active when susceptible mice are in the proximity of the aggressor strain. During stress itself, LHb activity is higher in susceptible mice during aggressor proximity, and activation of the LHb during stress biases mice towards susceptibility. This manipulation generates a persistent and widespread increase in the balance of subcortical versus cortical activity in susceptible mice. Taken together, our results indicate that heightened activity in the LHb during stress produces lasting brainwide and behavioral substrates of susceptibility.