We investigated how an unpredictable housing treatment (UHT) influenced measures of rat affect.
Half of the rats experienced an unpredictable housing treatment (UHT) designed to induce a negative state.
Eight of the rats underwent unpredictable changes in their husbandry regime designed to be mildly stressful (unpredictable housing treatment: UHT).
They then experienced either an unpredictable housing treatment (UHT) designed to induce a negative state, or control (predictable) housing.
Six male Lister hooded rats, previously subjects in unrelated studies, provided the social stimuli in the unpredictable housing treatment; they were 16 months old at the start of the treatment.
These counter-intuitive findings may have occurred because UHT rats adapted to and were stimulated by the unpredictable housing treatment, whilst control rats living in a predictable environment became more sensitive to novelty and change.
Rats housed in unpredictable housing conditions that induce a mild negative depression-like state [12,13] were less likely to judge ambiguous tones as predicting a rewarding outcome than those housed in control conditions – they showed a pessimistic-like bias in line with findings that people in negative states judge ambiguous stimuli negatively [3,8,9].
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