What can We Know from Pituitary-Adrenal Hormones About the Nature and Consequences of Exposure to Emotional Stressors?
What can We Know from Pituitary-Adrenal Hormones About the Nature and Consequences of Exposure to Emotional Stressors?
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DOI：
10.1007/s10571-012-9814-6
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发表时间：
2012-07-01
影响因子：
4
通讯作者：
Nadal, Roser
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Armario, Antonio;Daviu, Nuria;Nadal, Roser
暴露于压力诱导生物体的深刻的生理和行为变化，这些变化中的一些可能是重要的关于压力诱导的病理和精神疾病的动物模型。压力的后果取决于暴露于压力源（急性，慢性）的持续时间，但也取决于某些特征，如强度，可控性和可预测性。如果某些生物学变量能够反映这些特征，它们就可以用来预测压力的负面后果。在压力引起的无数生理变化中，只有有限数量的变量似乎反映了情况的强度，主要是血浆ACTH和肾上腺素水平。外周下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）激素（ACTH和皮质酮）也能够反映恐惧条件反射。相反，HPA轴的激活并不总是与焦虑相关，如高架十字迷宫等经典测试所评估的。类似地，没有一致的证据表明HPA轴对心理变量（如可控性和可预测性）的敏感性，尽管事实是：（a）缺乏对厌恶刺激的控制可以诱导在施加控制的动物中看不到的行为改变，（B）动物对可预测的压力情况与不可预测的压力情况表现出明显的偏好。新的研究需要重新评估HPA轴和心理压力特征之间的关系，使用ACTH代替皮质酮，并利用我们目前对这一重要压力系统的调节知识。
Exposure to stress induces profound physiological and behavioral changes in the organisms and some of these changes may be important regarding stress-induced pathologies and animal models of psychiatric diseases. Consequences of stress are dependent on the duration of exposure to stressors (acute, chronic), but also of certain characteristics such as intensity, controllability, and predictability. If some biological variables were able to reflect these characteristics, they could be used to predict negative consequences of stress. Among the myriad of physiological changes caused by stress, only a restricted number of variables appears to reflect the intensity of the situation, mainly plasma levels of ACTH and adrenaline. Peripheral hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) hormones (ACTH and corticosterone) are also able to reflect fear conditioning. In contrast, the activation of the HPA axis is not consistently related to anxiety as evaluated by classical tests such as the elevated plus-maze. Similarly, there is no consistent evidence about the sensitivity of the HPA axis to psychological variables such as controllability and predictability, despite the fact that: (a) lack of control over aversive stimuli can induce behavioral alterations not seen in animals which exert control, and (b) animals showed clear preference for predictable versus unpredictable stressful situations. New studies are needed to re-evaluate the relationship between the HPA axis and psychological stress characteristics using ACTH instead of corticosterone and taking advantages of our current knowledge about the regulation of this important stress system.