[Changes in the neuroendocrine regulation of adaptive behavior in rats subjected to stress in the late prenatal ontogenesis].

Female rats were subjected from the 14th to 17th day of pregnancy to immobilisation under conditions of 1-hour daily bright illumination. On the 20th day, contents of testosterone and estradiol was decreased with no sex difference in their level in the pregnant female rats' blood and in the amniotic fluid. Sex differences were flattened in 1-month litter both in the androgen and oestrogen contents and in adaptive behaviour. In prenatally stressed males, motor activity was inhibited and anxiety was enhanced as compared with the control. At one and a half months of age, the consequences of the prenatal stress disappeared and then reappeared after sexual maturation but with an opposite trend. Adaptive behaviour of adult males was less flexible and revealed no age-dependent oscillations inherent in the control animals. Prenatal stress while preventing the maximal raise of sex steroids in the blood shifts sex differentiation of the adaptive behaviour toward demasculinization.