Background
Acute psychological stress impairs higher-order cognitive function such as working
memory (WM). Similar impairments are seen in various psychiatric disorders that are
associated with higher susceptibility to stress and with prefrontal cortical dysfunctions,
suggesting that acute stress may play a potential role in such dysfunctions. However,
it remains unknown whether acute stress has immediate effects on WM-related prefrontal
activity.
Methods
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated neural activity
of 27 healthy female participants during a blocked WM task (numerical N-back) while
moderate psychological stress was induced by viewing strongly aversive (vs. neutral)
movie material together with a self-referencing instruction. To assess stress manipulation,
autonomic and endocrine, as well as subjective, measurements were acquired throughout
the experiment.
Results
Successfully induced acute stress resulted in significantly reduced WM-related activity
in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and was accompanied by less deactivation
in brain regions that are jointly referred to as the default mode network.
Conclusions
This study demonstrates that experimentally induced acute stress in healthy volunteers
results in a reduction of WM-related DLPFC activity and reallocation of neural resources
away from executive function networks. These effects may be explained by supraoptimal
levels of catecholamines potentially in conjunction with elevated levels of cortisol.
A similar mechanism involving acute stress as a mediating factor may play an important
role in higher-order cognitive deficits and hypofrontality observed in various psychiatric
disorders.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 30, 2009
Accepted:
March 2,
2009
Received in revised form:
February 27,
2009
Received:
November 5,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2009 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
