Acute cortisol elevations cause heightened arousal ratings of objectively nonarousing stimuli.

Abstract

To test the effects of cortisol on affective experience, the authors orally administered a placebo, 20 mg cortisol, or 40 mg cortisol to 85 men. Participants' affective responses to negative and neutral stimuli were measured. Self-reported affective state was also assessed. Participants in the 40-mg group (showing extreme cortisol elevations within the physiological range) rated neutral stimuli as more highly arousing than did participants in the placebo and 20-mg groups. Furthermore, within the 20-mg group, individuals with higher cortisol elevations made higher arousal ratings of neutral stimuli. However, cortisol was unrelated to self-reported affective state. Thus, findings indicate that acute cortisol elevations cause heightened arousal in response to objectively nonarousing stimuli, in the absence of effects on mood.

Acute exposure to stress improves performance in trace eyeblink conditioning and spatial learning tasks in healthy men

“…Analyses revealed that high activity of both components of stress response was strongly associated with maximal learning performance. This observation reinforces the claim that both HPA axis activation and NE release are required for an optimal effect on learning (Roozendaal et al 1996(Roozendaal et al , 2006Cahill et al 2003;Okuda et al 2004;Abercrombie et al 2005) and supports the concept of convergence in time and space formulated by Joels et al (2006).…”

Postreactivation Glucocorticoids Impair Recall of Established Fear Memory

“…4, available at www.jneurosci.org as supplemental material). These negative findings in mice are interesting in light of previous findings that glucocorticoids increase anxiety/arousal in human subjects (Abercrombie et al, 2005). It may be that our tests of anxiety in rodents are not as sensitive as measures in human studies.…”

Hydrocortisone reduces emotional distracter interference in working memory

“…Evidence with regard to GC effects on emotionally arousing stimuli is contradicting. One study found that GC administration caused heightened arousal in response to neutral stimuli without effects on mood (Abercrombie et al, 2005), whereas one other study found GCs to be mood uplifting (Het and Wolf, 2007). Fearreducing effects of GCs have also been reported.…”

“…It could therefore be argued that GC administration leads to less interference from emotional distractions. GC administration, however, might also lead to more interference from neutral stimuli, if indeed these stimuli would become more arousing, although the evidence for this option is sparse (Abercrombie et al, 2005). Nonetheless, in both cases the distinction between neutral and emotional distraction would be less prominent.…”