Validation of Wistar-Kyoto rats kept in solitary housing as an animal model for depression using voxel-based morphometry

Major depressive disorder is a common psychiatric condition often resistant to medication. The Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rat has been suggested as an animal model of depression; however, it is still challenging to translate results from animal models into humans. Solitary housing is a mild stress paradigm that can simulate the environment of depressive patients with limited social activity due to symptoms. We used voxel-based morphometry to associate the solitary-housed WKY (sWKY) rat model with data from previous human studies and validated our results with behavioural studies. As a result, atrophy in sWKY rats was detected in the ventral hippocampus, caudate putamen, lateral septum, cerebellar vermis, and cerebellar nuclei (p < 0.05, corrected for family-wise error rate). Locomotor behaviour was negatively correlated with habenula volume and positively correlated with atrophy of the cerebellar vermis. In addition, sWKY rats showed depletion of sucrose consumption not after reward habituation but without reward habituation. Although the application of sWKY rats in a study of anhedonia might be limited, we observed some similarities between the regions of brain atrophy in sWKY rats and humans with depression, supporting the translation of sWKY rat studies to humans.