miRNA profiles in ventral tegmental area associated with accompanying with companion treatment ameliorating chronic unpredicted mild stress-induced depressive-like behaviors in juvenile mice

Under chronic stress, the appearance of depression-like behaviors may be related to the decline of the brain's reward circuit function which caused by long-term lack of reward. However, the effect of reward treatment on depressive-like behaviors induced by chronic stress and its molecular mechanism in the brain remain poorly understood. Here, accompanying with companion was used to imitate a reward to study the effect of reward on depression-like behaviors induced by chronic unpredicted mild stress (CUMS), and high-throughput sequencing was used to analyze the miRNA profiles in ventral tegmental area (VTA) harvested from depression-like and resilient behaviors mice.