Stress effects on the top-down control of visuospatial attention: Evidence from cue-dependent alpha oscillations

Abstract

Stress is assumed to inhibit the top-down control of attention and to facilitate bottom-up processing. Evidence from human experiments, however, remains scarce. Previous studies have addressed how stress affects the interplay of bottom-up and top-down mechanisms of attention. A key open question is in how far such effects can actually be attributed to a stress-induced modulation of top-down attention control. We sought to isolate top-down from bottom-up effects by assessing stress effects on anticipatory changes in alpha oscillations that precede stimulus processing. Participants performed in a cued target detection task in which a cue prompted them to covertly shift their attention to left or right screen positions, 20 min after being exposed to the bilateral feet cold pressor test or a warm water control procedure. The stressor led to a substantial increase in cortisol, peaking 20 min post stressor, along with rises in heart rate, blood pressure, and subjective ratings of stress and arousal. As expected, cued attention deployment led to higher alpha power over posterior electrodes contralateral versus ipsilateral to the attended hemifield during the cue-target interval. Importantly, this purely endogenous effect was potentiated by stress, however, significant differences were restricted to the middle of the cue-target interval and thus temporally separated from the appearance of the target. These results indicate that stress does not impair top-down attentional control per se but may introduce a qualitative change modulating the way attention is deployed to meet action goals.

Triggered by your heart: Effects of cardioafferent traffic and stress on automatic responses in a Simon task

“…Timing, duration, and temperature of the bilateral feet CPT (Larra et al., 2015, 2022) were automated using MATLAB. The water used for the CPT was brought to the desired temperature in two boilers in an adjacent room.…”

“…Stimuli were presented either during cardiac systole (at 180 or 230 ms) or cardiac diastole (at 480 or 530 ms) after the peak of the R-Wave (Figure 1 2.2.3 | Stress intervention: Automatic cold pressor test Timing, duration, and temperature of the bilateral feet CPT (Larra et al, 2015(Larra et al, , 2022 were automated using MATLAB. The water used for the CPT was brought to the desired temperature in two boilers in an adjacent room.…”

Acute stress impairs target enhancement but not distractor suppression in attention selection: Evidence from the N2pc and Pd

“…(2019) found that the frontoparietal control network was more activated, compared only one of the targets was available, in response to selected one of two possible targets presented among distractors (Ort et al, 2019). As is known to all, acute stress down regulate the activity of PFC and thus impairs related function (Arnsten, 2009; Larra et al, 2022; Qin et al, 2009). This point of view also supported by the correlation results revealed that the more activation of HPA the stronger detrimental effect showed.…”

“…For example, Ort et al (2019) found that the fronto-parietal control network was more activated in response to selecting one of two possible targets presented among distractors compared to when only one of the targets was available. It is well known that acute stress down regulates the activity of the PFC and thus impairs related functions (Arnsten, 2009; Larra et al, 2022). This point of view is also supported by the correlation results, which showed that the greater activation of the HPA, the stronger detrimental effect.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that acute stress impair target processing by reducing the function of the fronto-parietal network(Larra et al, 2022; Sänger et al, 2014). For example, Sänger et al (2014) found that acute stress impaired target processing, as indicated by a reduced N2pc component.…”