Abstract
Various kinds of experimental ulcers have been used as a disease model of human peptic ulcer in the field of psychosomatic medicine for the purpose of investigating the significance of emotional stimuli to the occurrence and healing of ulcer. Several techniques to produce the gastric lesions in rats and mice were introduced. Acute gastric lesions were utillized to elucidate the relationship between susceptibility to ulcers and noxious emotional stimuli such as immobilization, communicated emotional stimuli and psychologically devised immobilization as well as an individual basic emotional trait. Repeated immobilization could produxe the deep ulceration with changes especially in the fore-stomac in the rats. Communicated emotional stimuli and psychological immobilization developed gastric lesions successfully in mice, though no physical stressors were employed here. Chronic experimental ulcers are applied to investigate the influence of the emotional stimuli on the healing process of ulcers. Acetic acid ulcers were used here as a chronic ulcer model, but none of these emotional stimuli could give any influence upon this process exept the basic emotional trait of being hypoactive in open field test.
