[Significance of different social factors active in the course of ontogenesis, for the effectiveness of chronic stress influences upon cerebro-visceral regulation processes of albino rats].

Fifty male albino rats were used to study how social factors (animals kept in large groups with playing-cage character, or in social isolation by solitary maintenance) are reflected in the responsiveness of cerebro-visceral regulation processes to chronic stress exposure. The following results were obtained: Animals kept from the 12.-30. week of life in social companionship and, additionally, exposed to chronic stress influences, proved to be greatly resistant to permanent load. This effect is referred to the rich supply of social afferentations and to the pronounced stimulation of proprioreceptive reafference as a result of social communication and motor activity. Animals kept, after preceding large-group maintenance, in social isolation from the 17.-30. week and simultaneously being exposed to the same stress influence as the animals in the playing cage, showed symptoms of an early stage of neurotically induced, arterial hypertension. Here, the chronic lack of socially determined, adequate environmental afferentation and of proprioreceptive reafference, as was typical of solitary maintenance, proved to be a factor enhancing the pathological predisposition of the organism under extreme environmental conditions.