Title & Introduction
Page 1
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Offense, Defense & Patrol/Marking
Page 2
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Neural Circuitry & Motivational Mechanisms
Page 3
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How Circulating Hormones May Affect Behavior
Page 4
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Pregnancy and Lactation
Page 7
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ACTH, etc.
Page 8
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Reproductive States
Page 9
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Conclusion
Page 10
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References
Page 11
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INTRODUCTION
Although most specialists would agree that hormones affect aggressive behaviors by acting on the brain mechanisms of those behaviors, beyond that there would be little agreement on details. The best that can be done at this stage of our knowledge is to build hypothetical models of the brain and put them to the test of experiments. Having recently published a hypothetical model of the neural circuitry of offense, defense, and submission (Adams, 1979a), I am in a position to speculate on how specific hormones may act on that neural circuitry.
Rather than using the term "aggressive behavior" and dealing with the behaviors usually included in it, I will use the term "agonistic behavior" and deal with a related but somewhat different group of behaviors. The reason for this is that "aggressive behaviors" are a group of behaviors that in some cases have no functional relationships, while "agonistic behaviors" refer to behaviors that are all functionally related. Brain (1979) has distinguished five types of "aggression" and noted that they are very different types of behavior: (1) self-defense ("fear"-mediated attack), (2) maternal aggression, (3) predatory aggression, (4) pup-killing, and (5) social aggression (offensive attack). Some authors consider that predatory behavior should not be considered aggression at all. Agonistic behaviors, on the other hand, are all related; they include those behaviors related to physical conflict between adult members of the same species (Scott, 1966). Among the types of behavior considered agonistic by Scott are fighting, escape, threat, freezing, defensive postures, dominance, and subordination. To this list should be added the behaviors of patrol and marking, which are critical for territory maintenance (Adams, 1980).
The present chapter should be considered in relation to a general picture of agonistic behavior in muroid rodents that is contained in a series of reviews. In addition to this chapter and the paper noted above on brain mechanisms, there is a paper concerning the effects of learning and imprinting on agonistic behaviors in muroid rodents (Adams, 1979b), and a paper that reviews field studies and laboratory experiments on agonistic behavior in muroid rodents (Adams, 1980). I have concentrated for the most part on muroid rodents because they are a single superfamily (Wood, 1965) that has only recently diverged in terms of geologic time (Wood, 1959), and they include many of the best-studied laboratory animals, such as the rat, mouse, gerbil, and hamster.
Through consideration of brain mechanisms, I have suggested that agonistic behavior is mediated by four motivational systems that may be distinguished in terms of their neural substrates but that are closely interrelated in their behavioral functions. The four systems are offense, defense, submission, and patrol/ marking. The rationales for the distinctions are outlined in the following sections. Maternal aggression, it should be noted, may be considered as a special case involving the simultaneous activation of both offense and defense systems.
The address of this page is http://www.culture-of-peace.info/hormone/title page.html.
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