Autor(es): Espigares, Felipe ; Alvarado, M. Victoria ; Abad-Tortosa, Diana ; Varela, Susana A. M. ; Sobral, Daniel ; Faísca, Pedro ; Paixão, Tiago ; Oliveira, Rui
Data: 2025
Identificador Persistente: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.12/13550
Origem: Repositório do ISPA - Instituto Universitário
Cognitive judgement bias in decision-making under ambiguity occurs both in animals and humans, with some individuals interpreting ambiguous stimulus as positive (optimism) and others as negative (pessimism). We hypothesize that judgement bias is a personality trait and that individuals with a pessimistic bias would be more reactive to stressors and therefore more susceptible to stress-related diseases than optimistic ones. Here, we show that zebrafish judgment bias is a consistent behavioral trait over time, and that pessimistic and optimistic fish express phenotype-specific neurogenomic responses to stress. Furthermore, both phenotypes show differential activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-interrenal axis in response to chronic stress, suggesting that optimists have a lower stress reactivity. Accordingly, optimists seem to be more resilient to disease than pessimists, as shown by a lower tumorigenesis in a zebrafish melanoma line [Tg(mtifa:HRAS-GFP)]. Together these results indicate that judgement bias is paralleled by differences in the stress response with implications for disease resilience.
