[Behavioral effects of oxidative stress]

It is known that oxidative stress is involved in the development of many pathological processes, but at the same time it became clear that it can play a significant role in processes of physiological adaptation. There are suggestions that oxidative stress can make a significant contribution to the disorders of learning and memory processes. This assumption served as a basis of this study, in which we tried to reveal the effects of low and high-level oxidative stress on behavior of rats in a multi-way maze. As an experimental model of oxidative stress, induced by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) we used oral administration of 0.1 and 0.2% aqueous solution of H2O2. It was found that animals treated with 0.1% hydrogen peroxide, significantly increased their behavioral activity and in the stage of "automatic behavior" they passed all the maze twice as fast as animals from the control group. But in case of 0.2% H2O2 locomotor activity of animals decreased sharply and for maze passing they spent in average 4-fold more time in comparison with the control group. In our opinion, the first dose of stress was within the range of hormetic mechanism's stimulation, but increased dose, led to its inhibition, which is a classic manifestation of hormetic effects of oxidative stress.