Stimulus Deprivation and Phospholipid Metabolism in Cerebral Tissue

Introduction  Isolation stress is now a recognized important problem involved in simulated and anticipated space flights and presents an urgent contemporary challenge for solution(s). Studies in human isolation are presently an integral part of the basic researches of space medicine and psychiatry.^1-3 The effects of isolation, i.e., stimulus deprivation, are observable as deviant behavior in man¹ and also in laboratory animals.⁴ Barnes⁵ has indicated that modern neuropharmacological agents, especially chlorpromazine, inhibited up to 90% of the abnormal behavior responses developed by rats and mice placed in solitary isolation for 7 to 10 days. Previous studies from these laboratories^6,7 demonstrated that drugs of the ataratic class inhibited, along with other biochemical systems, the turnover of cerebral phospholipids as measured by the incorporation of P³²o-phosphate. The degree of inhibition was generally observed to be related