Mood changes in response to psychosocial stress in healthy young women: Effects of pretreatment with cortisol.

Abstract

Effects of cortisol on human mood during stress situations are still incompletely understood, although this topic has important clinical implications. In this experiment, the mood of 44 healthy young women (all oral contraceptive users) was examined. A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled time series paradigm was used. Subjects were treated with either 30-mg cortisol or placebo orally. Forty-five minutes later, subjects attended a psychosocial stress procedure (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST; C. Kirschbaum, K. M. Pirke, & D. H. Hellhammer, 1993). The course of the subjects' mood as well as salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase levels were measured before and after the TSST. With regard to mood, it was found that the groups did not differ in mood before the TSST. After stress exposure, the subjective ratings of current mood state of cortisol-treated women were significantly less negative than that of placebo-treated subjects. These findings show that raising cortisol levels prior to acute stress has a protective effect on mood during stress situations. Results are discussed with regard to the context of specific adaptive effects of cortisol and the role of cortisol in posttraumatic stress disorder.

Psychophysiological responding to emotional memories in healthy young men after cortisol and propranolol administration

“…Even though propranolol was found to attenuate physiological responding (heart rate and SCL) to traumatic scripts in PTSD patients (Brunet et al 2008), we did not find such effects to negative emotional scripts in healthy young men. These results also contrast the finding by Het and Wolf (2007) that cortisol can affect the emotional experience of negative events and the finding that cortisol can reduce the intensity of traumatic memories (Aerni et al 2004). However, methodological differences between these studies and our study might have caused these conflicting findings, as we will discuss below.…”

“…Females might be more reactive to imagery of emotional memories or more sensitive to the effects of cortisol and propranolol, although in the clinical studies no gender effects are reported. Het and Wolf (2007) did find attenuating effects of cortisol on the experience of a negative emotional event in healthy women while we did not find such effects on negative emotional memories in men, suggesting that gender may indeed play an important role. Our negative findings on cortisol and propranolol could also be due to power problems.…”

“…These results might indicate that propranolol is more effective in attenuating emotional components of memories than reducing declarative memory. Het and Wolf (2007) found that cortisol administration in healthy young women led to reduced negative mood after a psychosocial stress task. They suggest that this effect might be mediated by a slight impairment in retrieving the just-experienced negative stress episode and/or from a reduced retrieval of previous negative episodes related to the stressor.…”

Immediate and prolonged effects of cortisol, but not propranolol, on memory retrieval in healthy young men

“…These studies have shown promising results, with reductions in re-experiencing and chronic stress symptoms after cortisol administration (Aerni et al, 2004;Weis et al, 2006) and reduced physiological reactivity after propranolol treatment (Brunet et al, 2008;Pitman et al, 2002;Vaiva et al, 2003). Phobic fears and mood responses to stress also seem to be reduced by cortisol administration (Het & Wolf, 2007;Soravia et al, 2006).…”

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.…”