Poststress glucose mitigates behavioral impairment in rats in the “learned helplessness” model of psychopathology

Three experiments examined the effects of poststress glucose treatment in the learned helplessness model of psychopathology in rats. In experiment 1, rats were given access to water or 40% aqueous glucose immediately following exposure to inescapable tailshocks or simple restraint in a 2 × 2 factorial design. Inescapably shocked rats failed to drink the glucose solution during the poststress interval and failed to show any improvement 24 hours after stress induction in shuttle-escape performance. Consequently, all rats received preexposure to a sweetened glucose cocktail in an attempt to increase poststress ingestion following inescapable shock treatment in experiment 2. Under these conditions, poststress intake of the glucose cocktail eliminated behavioral impairment in inescapably shocked rats relative to water-treated shocked rats and water- and glucose-treated restrained controls. Experiment 3 demonstrated that glucose prophylaxis occurs in the absence of sucrose when rats are preexposed to a 40% glucose solution prior to stress induction.