Autophagy does not lead to the asymmetrical hippocampal injury in chronic stress.

Chronic stress results in hippocampal injury, and impairs learning and memory ability of animals. However the cellular mechanisms underlying cell death within hippocampus remain elusive. The present employed the rat model of chronic unpredicted mild stress (CUMS) and examined the cellular mechanism responsible for learning and memory impairments. The results showed that in correlation to the decreased ability in novelty cognition and reverse learning, CUMS led to loss of CA3 neurons in hippocampus, especially in the right hippocampus. Interestingly, autophagy contributed to the cell loss but was asymmetrical on both sides. This suggested that CUMS resulted in asymmetrical hippocampal injuries, which is not fully determined by autophagy.