Chronic unpredictable stress induces negative cognitive bias in rats with sex-specific changes in neurogenesis and functional connectivity

Chronic unpredictable stress increases negative cognitive bias in male and female Sprague-Dawley rats, with CUS-exposed animals freezing more to an ambiguous context than non-CUS controls.

• Why it matters: Negative cognitive bias is linked to major depressive disorder onset and severity, yet how chronic stress reshapes cognition and brain networks across sexes remains unclear.
• What they did: Male (n=18) and female (n=22) rats underwent chronic unpredictable stress, then ambiguous-context freezing was tested alongside hippocampal neurogenesis and c-Fos mapping across 15 brain regions.
• The result: CUS reorganized functional networks in a sex-specific way, decreasing global network efficiency in males but not females, and freezing was predicted by opposing-direction effects of new neurons with ventral CA1 across sex.

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