[Nonspecific sensory and endocrine thermoregulatory mechanisms during acute cooling of the body].

Involvement of the midbrain RF into the thermoregulatory response follows excitation of anterior and posterior hypothalamic thermoregulatory centers and afferentation from thermoreceptors and other sensitive structures mainly during the "transitory" stages of the cooling process in cats and albino rats. Endocrinal shifts (hypothalamo-hypophyseal-adrenal, thyroid, and enterochromaffine systems) typical for stress response in 3-hr cooling, developed, strictly parallel to changes of thermoregulatory parameters; no such parallelism occurred in prolonged cooling (up to 30 days). Selective suppression of the endocrinal stress response to acute cooling by means of blocking the transport of hypothalamic neurosecret entailed diminishing of the adaptive thermoregulatory shifts. The unspecific sensory-endocrinal (stress) mechanism of thermoregulation seems to be adequate to acute cooling when specific responses of acclimation to prolonged cooling cannot be actualized.