Department of Physiology, Universidad de Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile.
Rev Neurosci. 2013;24(2):227-37. doi: 10.1515/revneuro-2012-0079.
Stress is a complex biological reaction common to all living organisms that allows them to adapt to their environments. Chronic stress alters the dendritic architecture and function of the limbic brain areas that affect memory, learning, and emotional processing. This review summarizes our research about chronic stress effects on the auditory system, providing the details of how we developed the main hypotheses that currently guide our research. The aims of our studies are to (1) determine how chronic stress impairs the dendritic morphology of the main nuclei of the rat auditory system, the inferior colliculus (auditory mesencephalon), the medial geniculate nucleus (auditory thalamus), and the primary auditory cortex; (2) correlate the anatomic alterations with the impairments of auditory fear learning; and (3) investigate how the stress-induced alterations in the rat limbic system may spread to nonlimbic areas, affecting specific sensory system, such as the auditory and olfactory systems, and complex cognitive functions, such as auditory attention. Finally, this article gives a new evolutionary approach to understanding the neurobiology of stress and the stress-related disorders.
压力是一种普遍存在于所有生物体中的复杂生物反应，使它们能够适应环境。慢性压力会改变影响记忆、学习和情绪处理的边缘脑区的树突结构和功能。这篇综述总结了我们关于慢性应激对听觉系统影响的研究，提供了我们如何提出目前指导我们研究的主要假设的细节。我们研究的目的是：(1)确定慢性应激如何损害大鼠听觉系统的主要核团，即下丘（听觉中脑）、内侧膝状体核（听觉丘脑）和初级听觉皮层的树突形态；(2)将解剖结构的改变与听觉恐惧学习的损伤相关联；(3)研究大鼠边缘系统中的应激诱导改变如何扩散到非边缘区域，影响特定的感觉系统，如听觉和嗅觉系统，以及复杂的认知功能，如听觉注意力。最后，本文提出了一种新的进化方法来理解压力的神经生物学和与压力相关的障碍。
