Acute stress impairs cognitive flexibility in men, not women

Shields, Grant S.; Trainor, Brian C.; Lam, Jovian; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

doi:10.1080/10253890.2016.1192603

Cited by 70 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…E. Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2011;Myin-Germeys, Krabbendam, Delespaul, & Van Os, 2003;Silverman & Sternberg, 2012;Slavich & Irwin, 2014). Greater stress exposure can also impair cognitive function (Shields, Sazma, & Yonelinas, 2016;Shields, Trainor, Lam, & Yonelinas, 2016)-presumably degrading quality of life (Diamond, 2013)-and is a strong predictor of earlier mortality (Rosengren et al, 1993). Multiple models have been proposed to account for these findings, and these models have been discussed in several excellent reviews (e.g., Doom & Gunnar, 2013;Heim & Binder, 2012;Hostinar & Gunnar, 2013;Koenig, Walker, Romeo, & Lupien, 2011;McEwen, 1998;Nederhof & Schmidt, 2012).…”

Section: Stress Its Definition and Relevance For Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifetime stress exposure and health: A review of contemporary assessment methods and biological mechanisms

Shields

Slavich

2017

Social & Personality Psych

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143

104

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Life stress is a central construct in health research because it is associated with increased risk for a variety of serious mental and physical health problems, including anxiety disorders, depression, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, certain cancers, and other diseases of aging. In this review, we examine how lifetime stress exposure contributes to elevated disease risk, and explore ongoing measurement and scientific issues related to this topic. To accomplish these goals, we first review existing instruments that have been developed for assessing perceived stress, self-reported life events, interviewer-assessed life stressors, and lifetime stress exposure. Next, we describe laboratory-based tasks that have been used for characterizing individual differences in psychological and biological stress reactivity. These methods have yielded an enormous amount of data showing how life stress influences the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, sympathetic-adrenal-medullary axis, and immune system, and how such processes can in turn cause allostatic load and biological embedding of the stress effect at the level of the human brain and genome. At the same time, many critical measurement and scientific issues remain unresolved, and we discuss these topics last while describing some pressing issues and opportunities for future research on stress and health.

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Section: Stress Its Definition and Relevance For Healthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifetime stress exposure and health: A review of contemporary assessment methods and biological mechanisms

Shields

Slavich

2017

Social & Personality Psych

Self Cite

143

104

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Even so, one study in humans (Shields et al, 2016b) and another in rodents (Laredo et al, 2015) found that stress-induced impairments of cognitive flexibility are greater for males than females. Although the reason for this sex difference is not completely clear, this sex difference appears to be mediated by sex differences in μ-opioid receptor binding in the orbitofrontal cortex following stress (Laredo et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of acute stress on core executive functions: A meta-analysis and comparison with cortisol

Shields

Sazma

Yonelinas

2016

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

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535

473

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Core executive functions such as working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility are integral to daily life. A growing body of research has suggested that acute stress may impair core executive functions. However, there are a number of inconsistencies in the literature, leading to uncertainty about how or even if acute stress influences core executive functions. We addressed this by conducting a meta-analysis of acute stress effects on working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. We found that stress impaired working memory and cognitive flexibility, whereas it had nuanced effects on inhibition. Many of these effects were moderated by other variables, such as sex. In addition, we compared effects of acute stress on core executive functions to effects of cortisol administration and found some striking differences. Our findings indicate that stress works through mechanisms aside from or in addition to cortisol to produce a state characterized by more reactive processing of salient stimuli but greater control over actions. We conclude by highlighting some important future directions for stress and executive function research.

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“…Moreover, the study only included healthy young men; for this reason, the present results cannot be readily generalized to women. There are few studies on acute stress and response inhibition or other core executive functions comprising both male and female participants, some of which did not report sex differences (e.g., Schwabe et al, 2013;Plessow et al, 2012), while others found women and men to be differently affected (e.g., Schoofs et al, 2013;Shields, Trainor, Lam, & Yonelinas, 2016). As well, sex differences in the stress response are known (e.g., Kajantie & Phillips, 2006), and there is at least some evidence for sex differences in response inhibition and its neural correlates (e.g., Omura & Kusumoto, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

Influence of acute stress on response inhibition in healthy men: An ERP study

et al. 2017

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The current study investigated the influence of acute stress and the resulting cortisol increase on response inhibition and its underlying cortical processes, using EEG. Before and after an acute stressor or a control condition, 39 healthy men performed a go/no-go task while ERPs (N2, P3), reaction times, errors, and salivary cortisol were measured. Acute stress impaired neither accuracy nor reaction times, but differentially affected the neural correlates of response inhibition; namely, stress led to enhanced amplitudes of the N2 difference waves (N2d, no-go minus go), indicating enhanced response inhibition and conflict monitoring. Moreover, participants responding to the stressor with an acute substantial rise in cortisol (high cortisol responders) showed reduced amplitudes of the P3 of the difference waves (P3d, no-go minus go) after the stressor, indicating an impaired evaluation and finalization of the inhibitory process. Our findings indicate that stress leads to a reallocation of cognitive resources to the neural subprocesses of inhibitory control, strengthening premotor response inhibition and the detection of response conflict, while concurrently diminishing the subsequent finalization process within the stream of processing.

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Acute stress impairs cognitive flexibility in men, not women

Cited by 70 publications

References 20 publications

Lifetime stress exposure and health: A review of contemporary assessment methods and biological mechanisms

Lifetime stress exposure and health: A review of contemporary assessment methods and biological mechanisms

The effects of acute stress on core executive functions: A meta-analysis and comparison with cortisol

Influence of acute stress on response inhibition in healthy men: An ERP study

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