Thirty depressed in- and outpatients received serial dexamethasone suppression tests (DSTs). Plasma dexamethasone and cortisol concentrations were drawn at 1600 on the day following a 1-mg oral dose of dexamethasone. The first DST was performed after patients were drug-free for a period of 1 week; the second, third, and fourth DSTs while patients received antidepressant medication. Dexamethason...

Anatomical alterations in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) are associated with hypothalamopituitary adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulation, altered stress hormone levels, and psychiatric symptoms of stress-related mental illnesses. Functional imaging studies reveal impairment and shrinkage of the mPFC in such conditions, and these findings are paralleled by experimental studies showing dendritic r...

The intensification of cattle production has raised concern for animal welfare due to the stress that is associated with farming practices. The welfare of an animal is determined by the animal's ability to cope with or adapt to its continuously changing environment and the biological cost that is associated with this adaptation and maintenance. Stressors arise from various psychological, physio...

Normal hypothalamopituitary development is closely related to that of the forebrain and is dependent upon a complex genetic cascade of transcription factors and signaling molecules that may be either intrinsic or extrinsic to the developing Rathke's pouch. These factors dictate organ commitment, cell differentiation, and cell proliferation within the anterior pituitary. Abnormalities in these p...

The relationship between stress and obesity was assessed in male rats selectively bred to develop either diet-induced obesity (DIO) or diet resistance (DR) when fed a high-energy, 31% fat diet for 3 wk followed by 2 wk on a hyperphagic liquid diet (Ensure). One-half of the rats of each phenotype were subjected to moderate daily, unpredictable stress (cage changing, exposure to conspecific, swim...

The present experiments examine the neuroregulatory hypothesis that the degree of sample-by-sample regularity of hormone output by an interlinked hypothalamopituitary target-organ system monitors the strength of feedback and/or feedforward signaling. To test this postulate and assess its generality, we implemented a total of nine thematically complementary perturbation experiments. In particula...