An experimental study of neuroendocrinological mechanisms underlying vulnerability to emotional disorders in pregnant and postpartum women.

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26380990
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Kagoshima University
• Principal Investigator: TOMIHARA KAZUYA 鹿児島大学, 法文教育学域法文学系, 教授 (00272146)
• Research Collaborator: OKAWA AYUMI 鹿児島大学, 大学院・人文社会科学研究科, 大学院生
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: エストロゲン / 不安障害 / 産後うつ / ストレス / ホルモン / マウス / 情動

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Recently we demonstrated that the chronic treatment of estrogen at higher doses increased, but at lower doses decreased, emotional behavior in female mice. Estrogen is also considered to affect the activity of a hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and hyperactivity of the HPA axis is associated with emotional disorder. Therefore, we investigated whether disturbance of HPA axis mediates the enhancing emotional behavior by treatment of estradiol. As the results, adrenalectomy (ADX) did not prevent the effect of estradiol, the animals treated with a higher dose estradiol showed enhanced fear and anxiety-related behavior regardless of ADX. There was no clear alteration in mRNA expressions of stress-related hormones in hypothalamus of female mice which treated with various doses of estradiol. These results suggest that HPA axis might not related the estrogenic regulation of emotional behavior in that situation. Other possibilities should be investigated in the future researches.

Free Research Field

実験心理学