Salivary alpha-amylase response to acute psychosocial stress: The impact of age

Almela, Mercedes; Hidalgo, Vanesa; Villada, Carolina; Meij, Leander van der; Espín, Laura; Gómez-Amor, Jesús; Salvador, Alicia

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.05.008

Cited by 86 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…higher sAA levels indicate higher SNS activity; for reviews see Nater & Rohleder, 2009). Higher basal levels of sAA have been observed in older people, and sex differences are not expected for the TSSTinduced sAA response (Almela et al, 2011b).…”

Section: Results Of Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that the increase in sAA after the onset of exposure to the stressor is faster than the increase in cortisol, as is recovery to baseline (Almela et al, 2011b;Nater et al, 2005), in study 2, we included one salivary sample immediately after the speech task and another one immediately after the arithmetic task, in order to have a more complete picture of the sAA response. The samples were provided 15 min before the TSST (À15 min), between the speech and arithmetic tasks of the TSST (+5 min), immediately after the TSST (+10 min) and immediately after the LNS (+25 min).…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Acute stress and working memory in older people

Pulopulos

Hidalgo

Almela

et al. 2015

Stress

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Several studies have shown that acute stress affects working memory (WM) in young adults, but the effect in older people is understudied. As observed in other types of memory, older people may be less sensitive to acute effects of stress on WM. We performed two independent studies with healthy older men and women (from 55 to 77 years old) to investigate the effects of acute stress (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST) and cortisol on WM. In study 1 (n = 63), after the TSST women (but not men) improved their performance on Digit Span Forward (a measure of the memory span component of WM) but not on Digit Span Backward (a measure of both memory span and the executive component of WM). Furthermore, in women, cortisol levels at the moment of memory testing showed a positive association with the memory span component of WM before and after the TSST, and with the executive component of WM only before the stress task. In study 2 (n = 76), although participants showed a cortisol and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) response to the TSST, stress did not affect performance on Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS; a task that places a high demand on the executive component of WM). Cortisol and sAA were not associated with WM. The results indicate that circulating cortisol levels at the moment of memory testing, and not the stress response, affect memory span in older women, and that stress and the increase in cortisol levels after stress do not affect the executive component of WM in older men and women. This study provides further evidence that older people may be less sensitive to stress and stress-induced cortisol response effects on memory processes.

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Section: Results Of Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Acute stress and working memory in older people

Pulopulos

Hidalgo

Almela

et al. 2015

Stress

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Participants in the stress group were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993; for a detail description of the TSST see: Almela, Hidalgo, Villada, van der Meij, et al, 2011), and participants in the control group performed a control task that consisted of 5 min of talking aloud about a recent non-emotional experience, and 5 min counting by 5 aloud. This kind of control task has been used in previous studies (Almela, Hidalgo, Villada, van der Meij, et al, 2011;Hidalgo et al, 2012), and it was designed to be similar to the stress task in mental workload and global physical activity, but without a stressful component. After the stress/control task, participants answered four questions (5-point Likert scale; not at all = 1, to extremely = 5) about their perceptions of both tasks (situational appraisal), based on the following aspects: stress, difficulty, frustration and effort (e.g.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acute stress does not impair long-term memory retrieval in older people

Pulopulos

Almela

Villada

et al. 2013

Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

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“…Yet affective states during distressing, but also during pleasant situations, are phenomena that comprise changes in subjective experience and physiology (Cohen et al, 2000;Plutchik, 1984;Scherer, 1984). These affect components should go hand in hand: For instance, feeling stressed should go along with an increased motivation to change the situation, and with physiological changes (e.g., heart rate and cortisol secretion increases; Almela et al, 2011;Cohen et al, 2000;Dickerson, & Kemeny, 2004) that provide the necessary energy to implement these motivational tendencies. However, empirical evidence of such coherence between changes in affective experiences and physiology is typically not very strong (Cohen et al, 2000;Mauss & Robinson, 2009).…”

Section: Prior Research On Age Differences In Affect Coherencementioning

confidence: 99%

Affect dynamics across the lifespan: With age, heart rate reacts less strongly, but recovers more slowly from unpleasant emotional situations.

Wrzus¹,

Müller²,

Wagner³

et al. 2014

Psychology and Aging

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We propose that a comprehensive understanding of age differences in affective responses to emotional situations requires the distinction of 2 components of affect dynamics: reactivity, the deviation from a person's baseline, and recovery, the return to this baseline. The present study demonstrates the utility of this approach with a focus on age differences in responses of negative affect and heart rate to an unpleasant emotional situation in 92 participants aged 14 to 83. The emotional situation was elicited with a social-cognitive stress task. Participants' negative affect and heart rate were measured throughout the task. Results showed that heart rate reactivity decreased, but heart rate recovery time increased, with age. In contrast, no significant age differences were observed in either reactivity or recovery for negative affect. These findings confirm that reactivity to, and recovery from, unpleasant emotional situations are distinct components of affect dynamics. They underscore the multidirectional nature of age differences in affective processes.

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Salivary alpha-amylase response to acute psychosocial stress: The impact of age

Cited by 86 publications

References 80 publications

Acute stress and working memory in older people

Acute stress and working memory in older people

Acute stress does not impair long-term memory retrieval in older people

Affect dynamics across the lifespan: With age, heart rate reacts less strongly, but recovers more slowly from unpleasant emotional situations.

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