Approach to human adaptability to stresses of city life

Abstract

Interest of human adaptability to city life is one of the most principal topics of physiological anthropology. Especially, cultural adaptation and flowing stresses by itself is the most important viewpoint of human adaptability in the recent modern life. In this paper, the authors reviewed the keywords of physiological anthropology, especially with the focus on techno-adaptability, and presented our experimental trials to study physiological polymorphism of cardio-vascular reactivity to mental stresses. We scoped the psychological stresses by means of mental tasks as an experimental model of techno-stress. Techno-stress was defined as not only from inadequate interface of man-machine system, but also from increased social complexity owing to highly advanced technological social system. In the experimental trial, we observed different types of cardio-vascular responses to several mental tasks. Blood pressure rose significantly during the tasks. However, contribution of change in cardiac output and total peripheral resistance on it was not the same between subgroups of the subjects.