Stress Sensitizes the Brain: Increased Processing of Unpleasant Pictures after Exposure to Acute Stress

Abstract

A key component of acute stress is a surge in vigilance that enables a prioritized processing of highly salient information to promote the organism's survival. In this study, we investigated the neural effects of acute stress on emotional picture processing. ERPs were measured during a deep encoding task, in which 40 male participants categorized 50 unpleasant and 50 neutral pictures according to arousal and valence. Before picture encoding, participants were subjected either to the Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Test (SECPT) or to a warm water control procedure. The exposure to the SECPT resulted in increased subjective and autonomic (heart rate and blood pressure) stress responses relative to the control condition. Viewing of unpleasant relative to neutral pictures evoked enhanced late positive potentials (LPPs) over centro-parietal scalp sites around 400 msec after picture onset. Prior exposure to acute stress selectively increased the LPPs for unpleasant pictures. Moreover, the LPP magnitude for unpleasant pictures following the SECPT was positively associated with incidental free recall performance 24 hr later. The present results suggest that acute stress sensitizes the brain for increased processing of cues in the environment, particularly priming the processing of unpleasant cues. This increased processing is related to later long-term memory performance.

New learning following reactivation in the human brain: Targeting emotional memories through rapid serial visual presentation

“…To control for group differences during encoding, free recall procedures (e.g., Wichert et al, 2013a) and explicit learning tasks with performance control after learning (e.g., Hupbach et al, 2007) were used in previous studies. In order to rule out possible group differences during encoding in the present study we analyzed the late positive potential (LPP) as measure of attention processing that has also been associated with memory performance (Weymar, Schwabe, Löw, & Hamm, 2012). However, we found larger LPPs in response to emotional pictures compared to neutral ones replicating many previous studies (e.g., Cuthbert, Schupp, Bradley, Birbaumer, & Lang, 2000;Schupp et al, 2004), but no group differences.…”

The effect of moderate acute psychological stress on working memory-related neural activity is modulated by a genetic variation in catecholaminergic function in humans

“…Nevertheless, converging evidence from multiple elegant readout measurements in the present study as well as our previous studies, including increase in hear rate and cortisol, changes in pupil dilation responses (Henckens et al, 2009; Qin et al, 2012) and increase in α-amylase and amygdala perfusion (Cousijn et al, 2010, 2012), firmly promote the conclusion that our emotion focused stress induction procedure was effective. That is, our procedure indeed successfully induced a state characterized by hyperactivation of catecholaminergic systems and negative mood (Arnsten and Goldman-Rakic, 1998; Arnsten, 2009; Hermans et al, 2011; Shackman et al, 2011; Weymar et al, 2011). …”

Effects of Pre-Encoding Stress on Brain Correlates Associated with the Long-Term Memory for Emotional Scenes

“…During hand immersion, participants were videotaped, asked to look straight into the camera and told that video recordings would later be analyzed for facial expressions. Several studies have shown that the SECPT is an effective stress induction method that leads to significant elevations in autonomic arousal, salivary cortisol and subjective stress ratings [34]–[36]. Participants in the control condition (N = 26) immersed their right hand including the wrist for 3 min in warm water (35–37°C).…”