The age-related changes of monoamine contents and monoamine oxidase (MAO) activities in the whole brain and blood pressures were measured and compared every week during the ages of 5 weeks to 12 weeks in two types of animals; (1) spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and (2) normotensive Sprague-Dawley rats (NR). Blood pressures in SHR began to rise at the ages of 7 or 8 weeks and were significantly higher thereafter than in NR. Abnormally low MAO activities in the brain of SHR were detected from the ages of 8 weeks. Comparisons were also made between brain monoamine-norepinephrine, dopamine and 5-hydroxytrytamine contents of SHR and those of NR at the same ages throughout the test period. In SHR, none of those monoamine values was consistently higher or lower than in NR during the test period. Protein contents of the brain between SHR and NR were not significantly different at any ages. These observations suggest that the abnormally low MAO activities in SHR brain may be one of the underlying neurological factors for the susceptibilities to hypertension and the deficit of MAO activities may be due to the changes in properties rather than in amount of this enzyme.