TY - JOUR
T1 - Habituation to repeated stress
T2 - Get used to it
AU - Grissom, Nicola
AU - Bhatnagar, Seema
PY - 2009/9
Y1 - 2009/9
N2 - Habituation, as described in the landmark paper by Thompson et al. [Thompson, R. F., & Spencer, W. A. (1966). Habituation: A model phenomenon for the study of neuronal substrates of behavior. Psychological Review, 73(1), 16-43], is a form of simple, nonassociative learning in which the magnitude of the response to a specific stimulus decreases with repeated exposure to that stimulus. A variety of neuronal and behavioral responses have been shown to be subject to habituation based on the criteria presented in that paper. It has been known for several decades that the magnitude of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activation occurring in response to a stressor declines with repeated exposure to that same stressor. For some time this decline has been referred to as "habituation" in the stress neurobiology literature. However, how this usage compares to the definition proposed by Thompson and Spencer has not been systematically addressed. For this special issue, we review the stress neurobiology literature and examine the support available for considering declines in HPA response to repeated stress to be response habituation in the sense defined by Thompson and Spencer. We conclude that habituation of HPA activity meets many, but not all, important criteria for response habituation, supporting the use of this term within the context of repeated stress. However, we also propose that response habituation can, at best, only partially explain the phenomenon of HPA habituation, which also involves well-known negative feedback mechanisms, activation of broad stress-related neural circuitry and potentially more complex associative learning mechanisms.
AB - Habituation, as described in the landmark paper by Thompson et al. [Thompson, R. F., & Spencer, W. A. (1966). Habituation: A model phenomenon for the study of neuronal substrates of behavior. Psychological Review, 73(1), 16-43], is a form of simple, nonassociative learning in which the magnitude of the response to a specific stimulus decreases with repeated exposure to that stimulus. A variety of neuronal and behavioral responses have been shown to be subject to habituation based on the criteria presented in that paper. It has been known for several decades that the magnitude of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activation occurring in response to a stressor declines with repeated exposure to that same stressor. For some time this decline has been referred to as "habituation" in the stress neurobiology literature. However, how this usage compares to the definition proposed by Thompson and Spencer has not been systematically addressed. For this special issue, we review the stress neurobiology literature and examine the support available for considering declines in HPA response to repeated stress to be response habituation in the sense defined by Thompson and Spencer. We conclude that habituation of HPA activity meets many, but not all, important criteria for response habituation, supporting the use of this term within the context of repeated stress. However, we also propose that response habituation can, at best, only partially explain the phenomenon of HPA habituation, which also involves well-known negative feedback mechanisms, activation of broad stress-related neural circuitry and potentially more complex associative learning mechanisms.
KW - ACTH
KW - Chronic stress
KW - Glucocorticoids
KW - HPA
KW - Stress
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=67349248128&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=67349248128&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.nlm.2008.07.001
DO - 10.1016/j.nlm.2008.07.001
M3 - Article
C2 - 18667167
AN - SCOPUS:67349248128
SN - 1074-7427
VL - 92
SP - 215
EP - 224
JO - Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
JF - Neurobiology of Learning and Memory
IS - 2
ER -