Reward-Related Striatal Responses Following Stress in Healthy Individuals and Patients With Bipolar Disorder

Mechanisms of memory under stress

“…Moreover, deficits in memory retrieval or flexibility under stress might be attenuated by rebalancing cortical excitation and inhibition, recently shown to be altered under acute stress (Han et al, 2020), via transcranial direct current stimulation over cortical sites of the ECN or DMN (Barron et al, 2016;Koolschijn et al, 2019). Finally, the identified mechanisms could help to identify relevant (epi)genetic (Vukojevic et al, 2020) or neural (van Leeuwen et al, 2019) risk markers, e.g., related to ECB signaling, expression of stress hormone receptors or large-scale network balance, for individuals who are particularly vulnerable to maladaptive stress effects on memory. The individual vulnerability to stress-related disorders may be linked to different stages of memory (formation versus retrieval) and to specific phases of the stress response (rapid versus delayed).…”

Self-beneficial belief updating as a coping mechanism for stress-induced negative affect

“…When learning takes place with a delay to stress, trace conditioning 33 , and updating in reversal fear conditioning 34 are attenuated, cortisol is associated with reduced fear conditioning 32 and working memory is reduced 35 , 36 . Timing of stress seems to be important for feedback-based or reward-based learning as well 37 . Initially, acute stress (e.g.…”

“…Here, feedback processing is more strongly driven by stimuli signaling reward and possibly associated with stress-induced cortisol change 43 while learning from negative feedback is decreased, potentially linked to cortisol levels before learning 44 . On the neural systems level, stress recovery is associated with increased striatal responses to rewarding feedback at 50 min after stress 37 , 45 . Moreover, specifically individuals with low striatal reward reactivity showed an association of recent life stress with lower positive affect, which makes striatal reactivity a potential factor of successful stress coping 46 .…”

Self-beneficial belief updating as a coping mechanism for stress-induced negative affect

“…However, these effects depend on the type, intensity and schedule of the stress exposure 28 , which might also explain heterogeneous effects of stress on reward processing and feedback-based learning. Research on declarative memory has shown that timing of stress matters 29 , which seems to be important for feedback-based learning as well 30 . Initially, acute stress (e.g.…”

“…Here, non-self-related feedback processing is more strongly driven by stimuli signaling reward and possibly associated with stress-induced cortisol change 36 while learning from negative feedback is decreased, potentially linked to cortisol levels before learning 37 . On the neural systems level, stress recovery is associated with increased striatal responses to rewarding feedback at 50 min after stress 30,38 . Moreover, specifically individuals with low striatal reward reactivity showed an association of recent life stress with lower positive affect, which makes striatal reactivity a potential factor of successful stress coping 39 .…”