Acute psychosocial stress investigated by an imaging stress test: concept and preliminary results

Social evaluative stress is an identified risk-factor for a plethora of psychiatric disorders. Yet, little is known about the neural correlates of psychosocial stress processing and the networks that translate psychosocial stress into an endocrine response. In this study we test a multimodal setup that integrates an experimental psychosocial stress intervention with BOLD-fMRI, stress hormone and mRNA measurements, psychometry as well as autonomic nervous system (ANS) measurements. Pilot Study In our pilot study we tested an adapted version of the Montreal Imaging Stress Test to apply psychosocial stress in 13 young subjects. The experiment consists of normal calculation task (10‘), calculation under stress (10’) and a switch back to normal calculation (10’). Generally, the cognitive workload is individually adjusted to the individual capabilities before in the 2nd sections performance monitoring, time pressure and negative feedback are used to induce stress. After optimized preprocessing, fMRI analysis focused on proof-of-concept contrasts of the cognitive elements of the task and on an exploration of connectivity changes (both on a whole brain atlas and selected limbic regions) as determined from the resting periods between the active blocks. Resultwise, the task related BOLD amplitude analysis yielded satisfying proof-of-concept patterns for the calculus, feedback-processing and motor response contrasts. Feedback-processing related striatal signals showed strong deactivation.