S. S. Pertsov - Dr. Sc. (Med.), Professor, Deputy Director, P.K. Anokhin Institute of Normal Physiology (Moscow). E-mail: s.pertsov@mail.ru

The problem of stress and stress-related psychosomatic disorders attracts much attention of scientists and other experts in the field of medicine and biology. The researches performed at our Institute are based on the individual approach to studying the stress reactions in the body. Experiments on rats showed that their activity in the open-field test serves as a reliable prognostic criterion for the sensitivity to stress. Behaviorally active animals are more resistant to stress than passive specimens. Under conditions of experimental stress the rats with different behavioral parameters were characterized by various manifestations of the biological stress syndrome, e.g., involution of the thymus and spleen, erosive and ulcerative lesions of the stomach, and morphofunctional abnormalities of lymphoid structures in the gastrointestinal tract [1]. Behaviorally passive and active specimens were shown to differ in variations of albumin parameters [5], concentration of stress hormones, and level of cytokines in the blood after stress exposure [2]. The specific features of post-stress changes in physiological functions of rats with different emotional reactivity are mediated by certain central mechanisms. The observed variations of neurotransmitter content in the brain under stress conditions provide support to published data on the specifics of neurochemical processes in CNS of specimens with different resistance to stress factors. Our studies showed that stress exposure in behaviorally passive and active rats is accompanied by various changes in pulse activity of neurons in emotiogenic structures of the brain and their sensitivity to biologically active substances [3]. Regional differences were found in the ratio of oxidative and antioxidant processes in brain tissues of animals with various reactions to stress [4]. Experimental stress was followed by specific changes in the proteomic profile of brain structures in rats with various patterns of behavior in the open-field test [6]. These data illustrate the importance of an individual approach to studying the central and peripheral mechanisms for systemic organization of physiological functions in mammals during emotional stress.