Neural responses to social evaluative threat in the absence of negative investigator feedback and provoked performance failures

Abstract

Functional neuroimaging of social stress induction has considerably furthered our understanding of the neural risk architecture of stress-related mental disorders. However, broad application of existing neuroimaging stress paradigms is challenging, among others due to the relatively high intensity of the employed stressors, which limits applications in patients and longitudinal study designs. Here, we introduce a less intense neuroimaging stress paradigm in which subjects anticipate, prepare, andgive speeches under simulated social evaluation without harsh investigator feedback or provoked performance failures (IMaging Paradigm for Evaluative Social Stress, IMPRESS). We show that IMPRESS significantly increases perceived arousal as well as adrenergic (heart rate, pupil diameter, and blood pressure) and hormonal (cortisol) responses. Amygdala and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pACC), two key regions of the emotion and stress regulatory circuitry, are significantly engaged by IMPRESS. We further report associations of amygdala and pACC responses with measures of adrenergic arousal (heart rate, pupil diameter) and social environmental risk factors (adverse childhood experiences, urban living). Our data indicate that IMPRESS induces benchmark psychological and endocrinological responses to social evaluative stress, taps into core neural circuits related to stress processing and mental health risk, and is promising for application in mental illness and in longitudinal study designs. K E Y W O R D S functional neuroimaging, mental health, risk factors, social perception, stress

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Stress-Induced Network Reconfigurations Reflect Negative Affectivity

“…Second, we showed that only spatio-temporal FC profiles predicted inter-individual differences in a dimension related to negative affectivity, a well-established transdiagnostic marker of heightened stress susceptibility. Third, reduced FC in subnetworks dominated by DMN and corticolimbic edges during stress anticipation and increased FC during stress added to the prediction, highlighting that anticipatory stress regulation (11,84,85) could help unravel signatures indicative of a key psychopathology dimension of affective disorders (86,87). Taken together, our results provide a quantitative mapping of dynamic brain connectivity changes in the acute stress response that reflect psychological differences in affective processing (i.e., measures that have been associated with mood and anxiety disorders).…”

Spatio-temporal dynamics of stress-induced network reconfigurations reflect negative affectivity

“…Second, we showed that only spatio-temporal FC profiles predicted inter-individual differences in a dimension related to negative affectivity, a well-established transdiagnostic marker of heightened stress susceptibility. Third, reduced FC in subnetworks dominated by DMN and cortico-limbic edges during stress anticipation and increased FC during stress added to the prediction, highlighting that anticipatory stress regulation (11,84,85) could help unravel signatures indicative of a key psychopathology dimension of affective disorders (86, 87). Taken together, our results provide a quantitative mapping of dynamic brain connectivity changes in the acute stress response that reflect psychological differences in affective processing (i.e., measures that have been associated with mood and anxiety disorders).…”

Inducing and Recording Acute Stress Responses on a Large Scale With the Digital Stress Test (DST): Development and Evaluation Study

“…The Speech-Task includes 3 inconvenient answering scenarios (eg, “Describe a situation when you’ve been criticized by someone!”) that are based on a previous study by Fehlner et al [ 19 ]. For each scenario, they are given 10 seconds to prepare and 20 seconds to present their speech.…”

“…Stressors that enable the investigation of stress responses without direct experimenter contact have been developed for imaging scenarios [ 18 ]. Using their Imaging Paradigm for Evaluative Social Stress, Fehlner et al [ 19 ] showed that delivering short spoken answers to selected topics in front of a prerecorded audience and additional framings induced robust stress responses. This indicates that psychosocial stress can also be induced by making the participants believe they are exposed to some kind of social evaluation without direct experimenter interaction.…”