[Hormones and aggression].

Abstract

This work is a review about psychoendocrinologic aspects of aggressive behavior. We have considered two approaches, the classical view focused on hormonal influences in the regulation of aggression and the most recent view which accounts for the influences of aggressive behavior and social status on hormonal secretion. In this review we differentiate the organizational from the activational effects. The main conclusions are referred to the gonadal steroids effects both organization and activation of the neural subtract of aggression. Among them it seems that aromatizable androgens have the most important effects. On the other hand, the testosterone would be predictive for dominant social status, the corticosterone would be for submission and finally, the ACTH would be predictive for the aggressive behavior but not for submission. In addition to that the literature point that the defeat experience is the main factor in submission. Referred to the effects of behavior on hormonal secretions, all the studies point out that social interaction elicits sympathetic-medullar and gonadal activation in the dominant animals and cortico-adrenal activation in the submissive ones.