Individual behavioral and neuroendocrine differences in responsiveness to audiogenic stress.

A relatively wide range of individual differences in neuroendocrine, immune and behavioral components of the audiogenic stress response has been found. In this study, an analysis of the association between the physiological and behavioral measures revealed that the degree of noise-induced suppression of both general activity and ingestive behaviors was significantly correlated with activation of adrenal steroid secretion following both acute and repeated noise exposures. Splenic natural killer cytotoxicity was not correlated with the behavioral measures of the stress response. Characterization of individual behavioral response profiles may be needed to evaluate accurately the neuroendocrine effects of stress.