Date of Award

8-1986

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Kay Malott

Second Advisor

Dr. Alan Poling

Third Advisor

Dr. Frederick Gault

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

After receiving intermittent exposure to a tone (3000 Hz, 100 db, SPL), rats were tested on a hot plate for analgesia. Rats that received tone alone showed a higher average paw-lick latency than rats that received either naloxone or saline alone. This result indicates that the auditory stimulus used in this study can be considered a neurogenic stressor and may be added to the list of various noxious stimuli that prouces analgesic effects. Naloxone given to tone-treated subjects produced mean paw-lick latencies were comparable to control group latencies for the first two treatment sessions and to tone group latencies for the last four treatment sessions. However, the difference between the tone group and naloxone pre-treated tone group was not significant. The failure to find a reversal of the analgesic effect by naloxone supports the position that both opiate (naloxone sensitive) and non-opiate (naloxone insensitive) systems may be involved in the modulation of stress. The results also suggest that the nature of stress and its temporal features may determine which system can be selectively activated by environmental stimuli.

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