Determinants of Emotionality in the Rat

Abstract

A total of 112 rats (56 males and 56 females) is used to investigate the effects of some antecedent factors upon the defecation and ambulation scores derived from Hall's open‐field test of emotionality, given under precisely standardized conditions. Conditions of rearing and husbandry are similarly constant, except where systematically varied for experimental purposes. The results show that neither defecation nor ambulation is affected by systematic ‘gentling’. Sexual experience does not affect defecation, but increases ambulation significantly, and this effect appears due, among females, to the experience of suckling a litter. Previous experience of the same test at earlier ages decreases defecation among young rats, but not among older ones, while ambulation is unaffected throughout. The effect of ageing itself upon defecation is seen as a decrease among older rats only, young ones being unaffected: conversely, its effect upon ambulation is an increase among young ones only. The previously reported sex difference in response is confirmed; no interaction between this sex difference and any of the experimental variables was detected. It is concluded that these findings further support the status of defecation, as observed in this test, as a measure of an emotional response.

Effects of stress on circulating nicotine and cotinine levels and in vitro nicotine metabolism in the rat

“…White noise was chosen because it has also been found to modify stress-related behaviors (e.g. urination, defecation, trembling) in rats (Patrick 1931;Bindra and Thompson 1953;Broadhurst 1957) and it was of interest to determine if this type of stressor would affect circulating nicotine or rates of nicotine biotransformation.…”

Multivariate Analysis of Temporal Descriptions of Open-field Behavior in Wild-derived Mouse Strains

“…In this test, an animal is simply placed into a novel, brightly lit arena from which escape is barred: the ambulation and the number of defecation in the field are often measured (Hall, 1934). The open-field test has been mainly validated in the rat, and it has been expected that the ambulation and the defecation have negative correlation (Broadhurst, 1957;Hall, 1934Hall, , 1936. Nevertheless, the test has also been widely used in mouse studies.…”

5-hydroxytryptamine release in the anterior hypothalamic and the hippocampal areas of cholestatic rats

“…Broadhurst (1957) suggested that defecation is an index of emotionality and positively correlates well with it. Our data once more show that the BDR rats were emotionally hyporesponsive as demonstrated previously (Swain and Maric, 1995).…”