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In retrospect

Eighty years of stress

Nature volume 539, pages 175–176 (2016)Cite this article

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The discovery in 1936 that rats respond to various damaging stimuli with a general response that involves alarm, resistance and exhaustion launched the discipline of stress research.

Modern research into biological stress — the physiological response of an organism to stressful stimuli — spans broad disciplines, from genetics to endocrinology to brain imaging. Much of this diverse field has a shared origin in a landmark paper published 80 years ago in Nature1. In this brief note, the biologist Hans Selye described a common physiological response in rats subjected to a diverse range of harmful factors; he named this the stress response2. Selye's observation set the scene for decades of future discoveries.

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Figure 1: Hans Selye outlines the general adaptation syndrome.

Don Graham/Division de la Gestion de Documents et des Archives, Univ. Montréal

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. George Fink is at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.,

    George Fink

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  1. George Fink
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Correspondence to George Fink.

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Fink, G. Eighty years of stress. Nature 539, 175–176 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20473

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