TY - JOUR TI - Sexual conspecific aggression response (SCAR) DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T32B8W1D PY - 2013 AB - Sexual abuse in adolescent girls and young women is unfortunately common and often leads to long-lasting deficits in thoughts and behaviors related to mental illness. In order to study the neuronal consequences of sexual abuse, we developed an animal model referred to as SCAR. The acronym stands for Sexual Conspecific Aggression Response, which indicates behavioral, cognitive and neuronal changes that occur after repeated exposure to sexually aggressive and experienced adult males. In the first set of experiments, pubescent females were exposed to an adult male aggressor for 30 minutes every three days over the course of adolescence (PND 35- PND 57). During adulthood, the female’s ability to learn an associative response was examined. Overall, adult females that were exposed to the sexually aggressive males during puberty did not perform as well as females that were not exposed to the male and showed increased sensitized responsiveness to the conditioned stimulus. Thus, the aggressive encounters during puberty were sufficient to induce long-lasting effects on processes of learning and sensitization during adulthood. We also examined the effects of SCAR on the survival of new neurons in the hippocampus as a result of the training procedure. In previous studies, we find that learning keeps new neurons alive. However, adult females that were exposed to the aggressive adult males during puberty retained fewer new cells as a result of the training process. Since they did not learn as well, these results indicate long-lasting effects of this procedure not only on cognition but also on the structural integrity of the adult brain. KW - Psychology KW - Sexually abused girls--Psychological testing KW - Sexual abuse victims--Psychological testing KW - Sexual abuse victims--Psychology KW - Sexually abused girls--Psychology LA - eng ER -