Chronically stressed individuals are reported to overconsume tasty, palatable foods like sucrose to blunt the psychological and physiological impacts of stress. Negative consequences of high-sugar intake on feeding behavior include increased metabolic disease burdens like obesity. However, the neural basis underlying long-term high-sugar intake-induced overeating during stress is not fully understood. To investigate this question, we used the two-bottle sucrose choice paradigm in mice exposed to chronic unpredictable mild stressors (CUMS) that mimic those of daily life stressors. After 21 days of CUMS paralleled by consecutive sucrose drinking, we explored anxiety-like behavior using the elevated plus maze and open field tests. The normal water-drinking stressed mice displayed more anxiety than the sucrose-drinking stressed mice. Although sucrose-drinking displayed anxiolytic effects, the sucrose-drinking mice exhibited binge eating (chow) and a compulsive eating phenotype. The sucrose-drinking mice also showed a significant body-weight gain compared to the water-drinking control mice during stress. We further found that c-Fos expression was significantly increased in the ventral part of the lateral septum (vLS) of the sucrose-treated stressed mice after compulsive eating. Pharmacogenetic activation of the vLS glutamate decarboxylase 2(GAD2) neurons maintained plain chow intake but induced a compulsive eating phenotype in the naïve GAD2-Cre mice when mice feeding was challenged by flash stimulus, mimicking the negative consequences of excessive sucrose drinking during chronic stress. Further, pharmacogenetic activation of the vLSGAD2 neurons aggravated anxiety of the stressed GAD2-Cre mice but did not alter the basal anxiety level of the naïve ones. These findings indicate the GABAergic neurons within the vLS may be a potential intervention target for anxiety comorbid eating disorders during stress.
Keywords: CUMS; GABAergic neurons; anxiety; compulsive eating; vLS.