Effect of partial hippocampal resection on stress mechanism in rats

¹ Department of Physiology, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

Chronic (repeated skin incisions) as well as acute stress (left adrenalectomy) was applied to rats whose hippocampus had been damaged through the neocortex (hippocampus-damaged), to rats in which only the portion of the neocortex over the hippocampus had been damaged (neocortex-damaged), and to control rats. Both in the acute and chronic stress series, the left adrenal ascorbic acid content before stress was compared with that of the right adrenal gland following stress, and the difference served as a measure of reaction to the stress. Under acute stress, 72 rats showed a decrease in adrenal ascorbic acid content more pronounced in hippocampus-damaged rats and control animals than in the neocortex-damaged animals. Under chronic stress, increase in adrenal ascorbic acid content in 68 rats was least pronounced in hippocampus-damaged rats, most marked in neocortex-damaged animals, while the value was intermediate in control rats. The inference from these data is that the hippocampus exerts a sustained inhibitory influence upon the pituitary-adrenocortical mechanism.

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