Search activity concept

The term SAC was coined during the 1970s by V.S. Rotenberg [1] together with V.V. Arshavsky on the basis of the physiological investigations on humans and animals according to the role of different forms of behaviour in body resistance to stress and diseases.

SAC distinguishes the following types of behaviour:

• Search Activity (SA), which is designed to change the situation or the subject’s attitude to it, with uncertainty regarding the results of this activity (indefinite probability forecast), but with constant monitoring of the results at all stages of activity. In humans and high animals SA is a component of fight, flight and orienting behavior; in animals it is a component of self-stimulation; in humans it is a main component of creative activity. In animals the indication of SA is a high-amplitude and well-organized hippocampal theta rhythm.
• Stereotyped behaviour (St), which uses habitual skills and algorithms with predictable results and is adaptive in non-stressful conditions; SA and St both belong to purposeful behaviour.
• Chaotic (panicky) behavior (Ch), which may seem to imitate SA however does not include monitoring of the results of activity. It is fraught with inadequate actions and finally often leads to renunciation of search;
• Renunciation of search (passive behavior, Pa), which manifest itself in reaction of surrender (giving up), helplessness and freezing.

All forms of behaviour that contain SA belong to coping and increase the body’s resistance to stress and deteriorating factors. Absence of SA leads in stressful conditions to the development of mental (depression, anxiety) and psychosomatic disorders. In opposite to the concept of coping, the value of SA lies in the process itself, not in the pragmatic outcomes of behaviour.

According to SAC, covert SA in REM sleep during dreams compensates for the lack of SA in the preceding wakefulness and ensures the resumption of SA in the wakefulness that follows. Functionally sufficient REM sleep dreams (based in humans on high right hemispheric skills) is crucial for preventing mental and psychosomatic disorders. In animals REM sleep deprivation combined with Pa causes death.

It is a positive feedback between SA and brain monoamines in wakefulness. In REM sleep SA is based on the nonmodulated brain dopamine activity and provides the condition for the resensitization of the norepinephrine postsynaptic receptors.

Paranoid schizophrenia is explained as a misdirected and irrelevant SA as an outcome of the functional deficiency of the polysemantic right-hemispheric way of thinking. Anorexia nervosa displays a misdirected pathological SA (confrontation with challenges like appetite, pressure of relatives etc.) as a compensation of deficient SA in other domains.

• Rotenberg V.S., Arshavsky V.V. Search activity and its impact on experimental and clinical pathology. Activitas Nervosa Superior (Praha), 1979, 21: 105-115.
• Rotenberg V.S., Arshavsky V.V. REM sleep, stress and search activity. Waking and Sleeping, 1979, 3: 235-244.
• Rotenberg V.S. Search activity in the context of psychosomatic disturbances, of brain monoamines and REM sleep function. Pavlovian J. Biolog. Sci. 1984, 19: 1-15.
• Rotenberg V.S. REM sleep and dreams as mechanism of search activity recovery. In: Moffitt A., Kramer M., Hoffmann R., editors. Functions of dreaming, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993: 261-292.
• Rotenberg V.S. Sleep after immobilization stress and sleep deprivation: Common features and theoretical integration. Critical Reviews in Neurobiology, 2000, 14: 225-231.
• Rotenberg V.S. An integrative psychophysiological approach to brain hemisphere functions in schizophrenia. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 1994, 18; 487-495.
• Rotenberg V.S., Kutsay S., Venger A. Behavioural attitudes and the level of distress in the process of adaptation to the new society. Stress and Health, 2001, 17: 187-193.
• Rotenberg V.S. Anorexia nervosa: Old contradictions and a new theoretical approach. International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, 2000, 4: 89-92.
• Rotenberg V.S. REM sleep function and brain monoamine regulation: An application of the Search Activity Concept. In M. Lader, D.P.Cardinali, S.R. Pandi-Perumal, editors, Sleep and Sleep Disorders, Springer, New York, 2006: 27-35.
• Rotenberg V.S. Sleep and Memory: The influence of different sleep stages on memory. Neuroscience Biobehavior. Rev. 1992, 16: 497-502.
• Rotenberg V.S. The psychophysiology of REM sleep in relation to mechanisms of psychiatric disorders. In: A.Z. Golbin, H. M. Kravitz, L.G.Keith, editors. Sleep Psychiatry, Taylor & Francis, London & New York, 2004, 35-64.
• Rotenberg V.S. Search activity concept: Relationship between behavior, health and brain functions. Activitas Nervosa Superior, 2009, 51: 12-44. http://www.activitas.org/index.php/nervosa/issue/view/20/showToc