A Novel Animal Model of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) (2012 - Present)

Investigator:  Christopher Bloom, Providence College
Mentor:  Matthew Nock, Harvard University 

Abstract:  Self-injury has become a phenomenon of great interest for many clinicians and researchers. Traditionally, the field has distinguished between those self-harming behaviors occurring among individuals with cognitive and developmental disabilities (i.e. self-injurious behavior; SIB), and those occurring in normative populations (i.e., non-suicidal self-injury; NSSI). It is to be expected, then, that these two conditions present in very different ways. SIB often includes stereotypic and repetitive self-harming behaviors, long hypothesized to serve a self-stimulating function for the individual. In contrast, the term non-suicidal selfinjury (NSSI) has been applied to a wide range of behaviors that result in the immediate damage of one’s own body tissue in the absence of intent to die. Ethical and safety considerations limit the nature and type of experimental investigations of self-injury possible in human populations. Additionally, the pathological behavior of injuring oneself is demonstrated in a number of psychopathologies and by a number of different populations. Animal models provide an opportunity to investigate this complex phenomenon in a systematic, experimental way, and may provide insights into the neurochemical mechanisms that maintain it. To date, the majority of rodent models of self-injury have utilized central nervous system stimulants such as, pemoline and caffeine to introduce self-injury in rodents. Our previously published work suggests that the use of CNS stimulants to elicit self-injury in rodents models the type of self-injury more akin to developmentally delayed populations rather than the normative populations that demonstrate NSSI. We maintain that the shift of focus away from a stimulant elicited self-injury to the proposed stressors will provide a better model for the understanding of NSSI. The proposed project seeks to develop an animal model that is specific to the circumstances of NSSI. This project, in recognition of the important role that stressors are thought to play in NSSI, focuses on the stressors themselves rather than the symptom of their effect; i.e. the self-injury. Animals will be exposed to both a non-nociceptive and nociceptive stressors in an attempt to replicate the environmental stressors thought to elicit and maintain self-injury in normative populations.