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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biol Psychiatry. 2017 Jul 29;83(1):9–17. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.07.014

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Effects of social-target sex and strain, as well as visual stimuli, on social behavior in female c57BL/6 mice exposed to the vicarious defeat stress (VDS) model. (A) When compared to controls (CON, n=11), female mice exposed to emotional/psychological stress (ES, n=11) spent significantly less time in the interaction zone when exposed to a same sex/strain social target during the “target present” condition of the social interaction test (p<0.05). (B) Using opaque dividers to block visual stimuli during VDS exposure prevented the development of avoidance behavior, since no differences in the time spent in the interaction zone were observed between the groups (p>0.05, n=10 per group). (C) Twenty-four h after VDS exposure, ES-female mice (n=6) exhibited higher levels of serum corticosterone, when compared to CON (n=8) mice (p<0.05). Data are presented as mean + SEM. *Indicates p<0.05 when compared to CON.