Acute Stress Influences Neural Circuits of Reward Processing

Abstract

People often make decisions under aversive conditions such as acute stress. Yet, less is known about the process in which acute stress can influence decision-making. A growing body of research has established that reward-related information associated with the outcomes of decisions exerts a powerful influence over the choices people make and that an extensive network of brain regions, prominently featuring the striatum, is involved in the processing of this reward-related information. Thus, an important step in research on the nature of acute stress’ influence over decision-making is to examine how it may modulate responses to rewards and punishments within reward processing neural circuitry. In the current experiment, we employed a simple reward processing paradigm – where participants received monetary rewards and punishments – known to evoke robust striatal responses. Immediately prior to performing each of two task runs, participants were exposed to acute stress (i.e., cold pressor) or a no stress control procedure in a between-subjects fashion. No stress group participants exhibited a pattern of activity within the dorsal striatum and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) consistent with past research on outcome processing – specifically, differential responses for monetary rewards over punishments. In contrast, acute stress group participants’ dorsal striatum and OFC demonstrated decreased sensitivity to monetary outcomes and a lack of differential activity. These findings provide insight into how neural circuits may process rewards and punishments associated with simple decisions under acutely stressful conditions.

The impact of an unpredictable context and intolerance of uncertainty on the electrocortical response to monetary gains and losses

“…Therefore, in the present study it is possible that the unpredictable context primed defense system activation, which in turn interfered with reward processing. This is consistent with previous research demonstrating that threat processing trumps reward processing (Frewen, Dozois, Joanisse, & Neufeld, 2008), and research indicating that stress can alter dopaminergic functioning (Lemos et al, 2012) and diminish both neural sensitivity to reward (Porcelli, Lewis, & Delgado, 2012) and reward learning (Bogdan & Pizzagalli, 2006). Overall, the present study suggests that a task-irrelevant unpredictable context has the capacity to alter a neural measure of reward system functioning.…”

Effects of the Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Stress Management on Executive Function Components

“…These results could be due to specific training of such skills by the cognitive change modules, in addition to the deactivation techniques used in training. Furthermore, Sensitivity to reward was increased after the therapy in the TG, which shows a gain against to stress by the participants, since previous studies indicate a reduced sensitivity to rewards under stress (Bogdan & Pizzagalli, 2006;Porcelli, Lewis, & Delgado, 2012). This could mean when the stress levels decrease by mean of the intervention, the responsiveness to rewards (before reduced) increases.…”

An Alternative to the Traditional Cold Pressor Test: The Cold Pressor Arm Wrap

“…Mean salivary cortisol levels in nmol/L at baseline, after task run 1, and after task run 2 for CPAW and no stress control groups (Mean ± SEM). Adapted from Porcelli et al 27 with permission. Click here to view larger image.…”

“…CPAW has been used in a previously published study examining the influence of acute stress on neural reward processing while participants underwent functional MRI scanning 27 . Thirty-two participants (16 females, 16 males; mean age = 23.41 years, SD years = 4.07) were randomly assigned between-subjects to a CPAW or no stress control group (an arm wrap composed of towels at room temperature).…”