![]() ![]() Chronic alterations in this adaptation are considered to promote a state of altered allostatic load that can result in the development of a maladaptive psychiatric and physical state (Mcewen 2001). Stressful circumstances force an organism to quickly adapt behavior and physiological processes to survive and to restore homeostasis. Of the many systems involved in the mammalian stress response, one of the most important and intensely studied is the endocrine system comprising the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis.Ī variety of stressors can activate the HPA axis causing a non-circadian release of glucocorticoid. Furthermore, severe stress in adulthood is associated with precipitation of the onset of psychiatric illness (Corcoran et al. For instance, early-life stress can induce changes in the endocrine stress response that lead later to increased incidence of depression (Nemeroff 2004). However, under states of dysregulation or after chronic activation, stress can be maladaptive and can place the body in a state of increased susceptibility to illness or disease. Stress can be beneficial in that it can create a situation of increased arousal and emotional salience enabling the organism to appropriately respond to the stressor and ensure survival. In this review, we will discuss the implications of this work on MR.įinally, we will discuss the possible interaction between MR and GR and how future work using double mutants (through conventional means or virus based gene alteration) will be needed to more fully understand how signaling through these two steroid receptors provides the adaptive mechanisms to deal with a variety of stressors.Īny imbalance in an organism's physical or psychological wellbeing creates a stress response that involves multiple systems and whose activation allows appropriate adaptation to the disturbance. ![]() Just as with GR, targeted mutations in MR induce a variety of behavioral changes associated with stress adaptation. Recently however, evidence has suggested that MRs in the limbic brain also play an important role in psychological stress. MRs in tight epithelia have a long established role in sodium homeostasis. We will describe both the behavioral and cellular/molecular implications of disrupting GR function in these animal models and describe the implications of this data for our understanding of normal endocrine function and stress adaptation. A variety of GR transgenic mouse lines have recently been used to characterize the role of GR in the CNS as a whole and particularly in the forebrain. To understand the different roles and interactions of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) during stress, it is necessary to dissect the role of corticosteroid signaling at both the system and sub-system level. Corticosteroid receptors are critical for the maintenance of homeostasis after both psychological and physiological stress.
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