Involvement of parasympathetic pelvic efferent pathway in psychological stress-induced defecation

Figure 1 Involvement of parasympathetic nerves and corticosterone in the accelerated defecation induced by acute water avoidance stress. A: The naive rats showed increases in defecation and corticosterone levels after 1-h of water avoidance stress (WAS) compared with sham stress; B-D: Effects of rectal nerve transection (RNT), vagotomy (Vag) and adrenalectomy (Adx) on WAS-induced increases in defecation and plasma corticosterone in rats. Each value represents the mean ± SE (n = 6-12 per group). ^aP < 0.05, ^bP < 0.01 vs the response of sham stress rats; ^cP < 0.05, ^dP < 0.01 vs sham-operated (sham op) rats.