• C M McCormick and M R Green.
• Department of Psychology, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. cmccormick@brocku.ca
• Neuroscience. 2013 Sep 26;249:242-57.

AbstractAnxiety and depression are the most prevalent of the psychiatric disorders. The average age of onset of these disorders is in adolescence, and stressful experiences are recognized as an important pathway to such dysfunction. Until recently, however, most animal models of these disorders involved adult males. We provide a brief overview of anxiety and depression and the extent to which adolescent rodents are a valid model for their investigation, and briefly review the main measures of anxiety-like and depressive behaviour in rodents. The focus of the review is investigations in which adolescent rodents were exposed to chronic stressors, describing our research using social instability stress and that of other researchers using various social and non-social stressors. The evidence to date suggests stress in adolescence alters the trajectory of brain development, and particularly that of the hippocampus, increasing anxiety and depressive behaviour in adulthood.Copyright © 2012 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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