Individual characteristics of behavior, blood pressure, and adrenal hormones in colony rats

Previous experiments suggested that rats with an active behavioral strategy and high endocrine and blood pressure responses to social interactions would be at risk to get a high blood pressure. To test this hypothesis, a long-term study of social behavior was performed in laboratory colonies of rats...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physiology & behavior 1995-05, Vol.57 (5), p.857-862
Main Authors: Fokkema, Dirk S., Koolhaas, Jaap M., van der Gugten, Jan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggression - physiology
Agonistic Behavior - physiology
Animals
Arousal - physiology
Behavior
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Blood pressure
Blood Pressure - physiology
Catecholamine
Catecholamines - blood
Colony
Coping
Corticosterone
Corticosterone - blood
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hormones and behavior
hypertension
Individuality
Male
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rat
Rats
Social
Social Behavior
Social Dominance
Social Environment
Stress
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Summary:Previous experiments suggested that rats with an active behavioral strategy and high endocrine and blood pressure responses to social interactions would be at risk to get a high blood pressure. To test this hypothesis, a long-term study of social behavior was performed in laboratory colonies of rats. The more aggressive rats, as indicated by individual precolony resident-intruder tests, are more aggressive in the colony also. After colony aggregation, the aggressive rats appeared to have higher resting blood pressures. The dominant rat (although aggressive, too) and the nonaggressive rats have lower blood pressures. Plasma levels of catecholamines and corticosterone after colony experience do not show a relation with blood pressure but reflect the rat's original precolony aggressive characteristic. We conclude that the individual characteristic of an active social strategy is a risk factor that indeed predicts the development of high blood pressure, possibly by way of the associated higher physiological reactivity we found earlier. Chronic environmental factors that are hard to control for the animal, like involvement in social processes or possibly other continuous challenges, may stimulate the prone physiology to develop an elevation of blood pressure.
ISSN:0031-9384
1873-507X
DOI:10.1016/0031-9384(94)00333-Z