Resilience to anhedonia-passive coping induced by early life experience is linked to a long-lasting reduction of I current in VTA dopaminergic neurons.

Exposure to aversive events during sensitive developmental periods can affect the preferential coping strategy adopted by individuals later in life, leading to either stress-related psychiatric disorders, including depression, or to well-adaptation to future adversity and sources of stress, a behavior phenotype termed "resilience". We have previously shown that interfering with the development of mother-pups bond with the Repeated Cross Fostering (RCF) stress protocol can induce resilience to depression-like phenotype in adult C57BL/6J female mice. Here, we used patch-clamp recording in midbrain slice combined with both and pharmacology to test our hypothesis of a link between electrophysiological modifications of dopaminergic neurons in the intermediate Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) of RCF animals and behavioral resilience.