La gestion du stress

Les auteurs se demandent si l'état de turbulence observé dans le monde du travail n'est pas en fait une réponse non spécifique de la collectivité face à des exigences de plus en plus grandes pour l'industrie

Emotional and Adrenocortical Responses of Infants to the Strange Situation: The Differential Function of Emotional Expression

The aim of the study was to investigate biobehavioural organisation in infants with different qualities of attachment. Quality of attachment (security and disorganisation), emotional expression, and adrenocortical stress reactivity were investigated in a sample of 106 infants observed during Ainsworth’s Strange Situation at the age of 12 months. In addition, behavioural inhibition was assessed from maternal reports. As expected, securely attached infants did not show an adrenocortical response. Regarding the traditionally defined insecurely attached groups, adrenocortical activation during the strange situation was found for the ambivalent group, but not for the avoidant one. Previous ndings of increased adrenocortical activity in disorganised infants could not be replicated. In line with previous ndings, adrenocortical activation was most prominent in insecure infants with high behavioural inhibition indicating the function of a secure attachment relationship as a social buffer against less adaptive temperamental dispositions. Additional analyses indicated that adrenocortical reactivity and behavioural distress were not based on common activation processes. Biobehavioural associations within the different attachment groups suggest that biobehavioural processes in securely attached infants may be different from those in insecurely attached and disorganised groups. Whereas a coping model may be applied to describe the biobehavioural organisation of secure infants, an arousal model explanation may be more appropriate for the other groups

The pursuit of happiness: the social and scientific origins of Hans Selye’s natural philosophy of life

© The Author(s) 2012. Open access article.In 1956, Hans Selye tentatively suggested that the scientific study of stress could ‘help us to formulate a precise program of conduct’ and ‘teach us the wisdom to live a rich and meaningful life’. Nearly two decades later, Selye expanded this limited vision of social order into a full-blown philosophy of life. In Stress without Distress, first published in 1974, he proposed an ethical code of conduct designed to mitigate personal and social problems. Basing his arguments on contemporary understandings of the biological processes involved in stress reactions, Selye referred to this code as ‘altruistic egotism’. This article explores the origins and evolution of Selye’s ‘natural philosophy of life’, analysing the links between his theories and adjacent intellectual developments in biology, psychosomatic and psychosocial medicine, cybernetics and socio-biology, and situating his work in the broader cultural framework of modern western societies.Wellcome Trus

Environmental adaptation, phenotypic plasticity, and associative learning in insects: the desert locust as a case study

The ability to learn and store information should be adapted to the environment in which animals operate to confer a selective advantage. Yet the relationship between learning, memory, and the environment is poorly understood, and further complicated by phenotypic plasticity caused by the very environment in which learning and memory need to operate. Many insect species show polyphenism, an extreme form of phenotypic plasticity, allowing them to occupy distinct environments by producing two or more alternative phenotypes. Yet how the learning and memories capabilities of these alternative phenotypes are adapted to their specific environments remains unknown for most polyphenic insect species. The desert locust can exist as one of two extreme phenotypes or phases, solitarious and gregarious. Recent studies of associative food–odor learning in this locust have shown that aversive but not appetitive learning differs between phases. Furthermore, switching from the solitarious to the gregarious phase (gregarization) prevents locusts acquiring new learned aversions, enabling them to convert an aversive memory formed in the solitarious phase to an appetitive one in the gregarious phase. This conversion provides a neuroecological mechanism that matches key changes in the behavioral environments of the two phases. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding the neural mechanisms that generate ecologically relevant behaviors and the interactions between different forms of behavioral plasticity

A “How-To” Guide for Designing Judgment Bias Studies to Assess Captive Animal Welfare

Robust methods to assess nonhuman animal emotion are essential for ensuring good welfare in captivity. Cognitive bias measures such as the judgment bias task have recently emerged as promising tools to assess animal emotion. The simple design and objective response measures make judgment bias tasks suitable for use across species and contexts. In reviewing 64 studies published to date, it emerged that (a) judgment biases have been measured in a number of mammals and birds and an invertebrate; (b) no study has tested judgment bias in any species of fish, amphibian, or reptile; and (c) no study has yet investigated judgment bias in a zoo or aquarium. This article proposes that judgment bias measures are highly suitable for use with these understudied taxa and can provide new insight into welfare in endangered species housed in zoos and aquariums, where poor welfare impacts breeding success and, ultimately, species survival. The article includes a “how-to” guide to designing judgment bias tests with recommendations for working with currently neglected “exotics” including fishes, amphibians, and reptiles

Stress among UK academics : identifying who copes best?

This paper examined the levels of stress and coping strategies among UK academics. Adopting a positive psychology approach, the influence of the character strengths of hope, optimism, gratitude and self-efficacy, on stress, subjective well-being (SWB), and mental health (GHQ) was examined in 216 academics in a UK university. The study explored the relationship between coping styles and work-coping variables of sense of coherence and work locus of control and stress. No significant differences on the stress, well-being and mental health measures were found for participants' gender, whether in full-time or part-time employment and level of seniority within the university. Participants using problem-focussed coping experienced lower levels of stress while dysfunctional coping was a positive predictor of stress. Hope agency, hope pathway, gratitude, optimism and self-efficacy were the strongest positive predictors of satisfaction with life (SWL), while levels of perceived stress negatively predicted SWL. Gratitude, hope agency and self-efficacy positively predicted positive affect, while stress was a negative predictor. Gratitude, hope agency, self-efficacy and optimism were negative significant predictors of negative affect while stress was a positive predictor. Gratitude positively predicted mental health, while stress was a negative predictor and optimism was a significant moderator of the relationship between stress and mental health. Academics with higher levels of gratitude, self-efficacy, hope and optimism report lower levels of stress at work and higher levels of well-being as measured by higher life satisfaction, higher positive affect and lower negative affect. New approaches to stress management training are suggested based on these findings

A Personal Message from Hans Selye

Some clues on how to make stress work for you from the foremost international authority on stress

An efficient chronic unpredictable stress protocol to induce stress-relatec responses in C57BL/6 mice

Exposure to chronic stress can have broad effects on health ranging from increased predisposition for neuropsychiatric disorders to deregulation of immune responses. The chronic unpredictable stress (CUS) protocol has been widely used to study the impact of stress exposure in several animal models and consists in the random, intermittent, and unpredictable exposure to a variety of stressors during several weeks. CUS has consistently been shown to induce behavioral and immunological alterations typical of the chronic stress-response. Unfortunately C57BL/6 mice, one of the most widely used mouse strains, due to the great variety of genetically modified lines, seem to be resistant to the commonly used 4-week-long CUS protocol. The definition of an alternative CUS protocol allowing the use of C57BL/6 mice in chronic stress experiments is a need. Here, we show that by extending the CUS protocol to 8?weeks is possible to induce a chronic stress-response in C57BL/6 mice, as revealed by abrogated body weight gain, increased adrenals weight, and an overactive hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis with increased levels of serum corticosterone. Moreover, we also observed stress-associated behavioral alterations, including the potentiation of anxious-like and depressive-like behaviors and a reduction of exploratory behavior, as well as subtle stress-related changes in the cell population of the thymus and of the spleen. The present protocol for C57BL/6 mice consistently triggers the spectrum of CUS-induced changes observed in rats and, thus, will be highly useful to researchers that need to use this particular mouse strain as an animal model of neuropsychiatric disorders and/or immune deregulation related to CUS.(undefined

Vestibular toxicity of cis-2-pentenenitrile in the rat

cis-2-Pentenenitrile, an intermediate in the synthesis of nylon and other products, causes permanent behavioral deficits in rodents. Other low molecular weight nitriles cause degeneration either of the vestibular sensory hair cells or of selected neuronal populations in the brain. Adult male Long-Evans rats were exposed to cis-2-pentenenitrile (0, 1.25, 1.50, 1.75, or 2.0 mmol/kg, oral, in corn oil) and assessed for changes in open field activity and rating scores in a test battery for vestibular dysfunction. Surface preparations of the vestibular sensory epithelia were observed for hair cell loss using scanning electron microscopy. A separate experiment examined the impact of pre-treatment with the universal CYP inhibitor,1-aminobenzotriazole, on the effect of cis-2-pentenenitrile on vestibular rating scores. The occurrence of degenerating neurons in the central nervous system was assessed by Fluoro-Jade C staining. cis-2-Pentenenitrile had a dose-dependent effect on body weight. Rats receiving 1.50 mmol/kg or more of cis-2-pentenenitrile displayed reduced rearing activity in the open field and increased rating scores on the vestibular dysfunction test battery. Hair cell loss was observed in the vestibular sensory epithelia and correlated well with the behavioral deficits. Pre-treatment with 1-aminobenzotriazole blocked the behavioral effect. Fluoro-Jade C staining did not reveal significant neuronal degeneration in the central nervous system apart from neurite labeling in the olfactory glomeruli. We conclude that cis-2-pentenenitrile causes vestibular toxicity in a similar way to allylnitrile, cis-crotononitrile and 3,3′-iminodipropionitrile (IDPN), and also shares other targets such as the olfactory system with these other nitriles. The present data also suggest that CYP-mediated bioactivation is involved in cis-2-pentenenitrile toxicity