Biology of Stress

Cortisol is a hormone associated with they body’s response to stressful situations.

  Researcher Dario Maestripieri at the University of Chicago is involved in research to determine how breastfeeding and having offspring affect the body’s stress response by measuring cortisol.

 His research uses rhesus monkeys that are relatively genetically similar to humans and also demonstrate similar behavioral characteristics.  Separating a free ranging monkey from its group is stressful for monkeys, so the researchers  capturing free-ranging monkeys and took blood samples to measure hormone levels at different time periods and then  analyzed the samples according to reproductive status - lactating, pregnant, neither pregnant nor lactating, while controlling for other variables such as age and rank.

The paper states “This analysis represents the first direct comparison of cortisol responses to stress in lactating and nonlactating females in nonhuman primates. We found no evidence of hyporesponsiveness to stress among lactating females. Rather, plasma cortisol levels were significantly higher in lactating than in nonlactating females, both shortly after capture and the morning after.”  Also, “Concerns over risk to their infants may explain why lactating females exhibited higher cortisol responses to trapping and individual housing and why these responses did not vary significantly across the 6 lactation months.”

This research is really important and interesting because stress can affect health and parenting behavior, so understanding the biological response to and natural causes of stress and is essential.

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