Figure 1. Chronic Stress Selectively Affects CBC Decision-Making.

(A) The four decision-making tasks.

(B) Single session diagram (left) and experimental timeline (right). For immobilization stress, rats and mice were immobilized, respectively, for 4 and 1 hr/day. For foot-shock stress, rats received 50 shocks, each lasting 3 s, over 1 hr. Both stress protocols were repeated on 14 consecutive days.

(C) Mean (± SD) psychometric function for a single rat performing CBC and BB tasks. See also Figures S1A and S1B.

(D and E) Performance in CBC (D) and BBS (E) tasks by individual control (left) and immobilization stressed (right) rats over 6–12 weeks. *p < 0.001 (CBC control vs. CBC immobilization, ANOVA repeated measures with Bonferroni correction). Intervals between two consecutive sessions were 1–2 weeks. See also Figure S1C.

(F) Decision-making by control and stressed rats performing the 4 tasks. Mean was calculated for each rat (dots), then mean and SD were calculated for each group. *p < 0.001 (one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni correction). See also Figure S1D.

(G) Psychometric functions of two rats for CBC task before (blue) and after (orange) stress. See also Figures S1G and S1H.

(H) Single rat’s psychometric function before (left) and after (right) chronic stress, modeled using a four-parameter sigmoid. The concentration of diluted milk was varied across sessions (circles), and a logistic curve was fitted to the data. Arrows show the onset of linear cost-benefit integration. The dashed lines show the linear trend of the choice behavior.

(I and J) Stress delayed the onset (I) and increased the slopes (J) of linear cost-benefit integration. *p < 0.05 (paired t-test).