Gender-related characteristics of responding to prolonged psychoemotional stress in mice

The behavior of male and female C57BL/6J mice was studied after prolonged psychoemotional stress imposed by enforced cohabitation with an aggressive male on the other side of a partition in the cage and daily witnessing of 10-minute confrontations between the aggressor and another male placed with it. The elevated plus maze test demonstrated marked anxiety in mice of both genders after one month of psychoemotional stress. However, only females, but not males, showed an increase in the duration of passive swimming in the Porsolt test, along with some reduction in communicativeness in the partition test. Thus, these studies showed a more marked reaction to prolonged pscyhoemotional stress in females than in males.