Impacts of environmental stress exposure on central nervous functional patterns. A quantitative approach to evoked potential data.

Albino rats and rhesus monkeys with chronically implanted electrodes in cortical and subcortical, vasomotory and emotionally relevant brain regions were subjected to psycho-nerval stress (short-term stressful CR learning experiments on rats, long-term environmental stress with disturbances of the diurnal rhythm and social hierarchy on rhesus monkeys). Applying average computer techniques and discriminance analyses to evoked potentials (average evoked potentials = AEP to standardized optic-acoustic test stimuli) we were able to objectify the effect of different stress categories on central nervous functional patterns. These phenomena of electrical activity of the CNS proved to be extremely responsive to the stress exposure (avoidance conditioned learning experiments or socio-emotional overstrain). Under moderated stress (CR phases of acquisition and stabilization), time-space patterns of a primary facilitation of AEP could be established, expressing an improved energetic capacity of the CNS (adaptive effect). On the other hand, there was a generalized impairment of bioelectric information processing in temporal correlation with an increase in psycho-nervous stress exposure to rats (CR phases of differentiation). During long-term socio-emotional stress exposure of rhesus monkeys the highly significant changes of AEP-patterns (increasing fall short of the set point of the bioelectric level of activity with segmental differences in the multiphasic evoked potential) are to be interpreted as maladaptive processes in central nervous function under long lasting high stress conditions.