MentalHealthDaily

Early-Life Visceral Stress Sensitized Auditory Brainstem Responses in Rats

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for early-life visceral stress and auditory brainstem sensitization.

A 40-rat early-life visceral stress study found auditory pathway sensitization without hearing-threshold loss: neonatal colorectal distension produced IBS-like visceral hypersensitivity, normal ABR thresholds, shortened auditory brainstem latencies, increased amplitudes, and 219 differentially expressed cochlear proteins.1 The result turns IBS-like stress exposure into a gut-pain and sensory-processing question. Research Highlights Visceral hypersensitivity was strong: At 20 …

Environmental Enrichment Reversed Visceral Pain and Depression in Rats

by GLOOM

MHD featured image for environmental enrichment, visceral pain, depression, and CB1 receptor circuitry.

A 2026 Communications Biology rat study found that enriched housing reversed early-life-stress visceral hypersensitivity and depression-like behavior by normalizing a CB1 receptor-linked prefrontal-limbic circuit connecting prelimbic cortex, anteroventral bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and paraventricular hypothalamus.1 Huang et al. mapped a gut-pain and mood circuit in rats, but the experiment does not prove that …