The effect of neonatal hyperoxia on sexual arousal and emotionality in the male rat

Abstract

Neonatal hyperoxia was studied as a method of provoking behavioural disturbances in animals because of its possible connection with adaptive deficiencies observed in premature human infants who had been exposed to excessive O 2 at birth. The sexual responsiveness and emotionality of adult rats was measured after they had been subjected to hyperoxia for 10 days after birth. These Ss were found to be less sexually responsive (longer mount latencies and smaller percentage of mounters) and more emotional (more defecation in the open field apparatus, larger adrenals, and smaller body weights) than untreated controls. Two other control groups of blinded and blinded plus O 2 treated Ss yielded comparable patterns to the O 2 group. These findings were interpreted to indicate that neonatal hyperoxia could be a potent influence on some aspects of adaptive behaviour and that at least one of its consequences was to establish long term stress factors which were apparently also introduced by the other treatments.