Suppressing the endocrine and autonomic stress systems does not impact the emotional stress experience after psychosocial stress

Abstract

Acute psychosocial stress activates the physiological and endocrine stress systems and increases the subjective emotional experience of stress. While considerable efforts have been made to link changes in the activity of the biological stress systems with changes in the subjective emotional experience of stress, results so far have been mixed, at best. To investigate this association in a study employing experimental manipulation, we pharmacologically suppressed both the autonomic and the endocrine stress responses, and investigated the effects of acute psychosocial stress on the emotional stress experience. 22 healthy men and women received dexamethasone (2mg) the day before, and propranolol (80mg) one hour before psychosocial stress induction. A control group (n=24) received placebo pills on each occasion. Salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase and heart-rate responses to stress were assessed before, during and after stress induction. Subjective stress, mood, and state self-esteem assessments were made before and after stress. In the pharmacological manipulation group, subjects demonstrated no increase in autonomic or endocrine stress response, after exposure to psychosocial stress. Despite these effects, the emotional stress experience was intact in this group and identical to the control group. Participants in the experimental group showed an increase in subjective stress, greater mood dysregulation, and lower state self-esteem following stress exposure, with the response magnitude comparable to the control group. Our findings suggest that at least acutely, the physiological stress arousal systems and the emotional experience of stress are dissociated. This raises important questions about the efficacy of our measurement of subjective stress, and the unique contributions of the autonomic and endocrine responses in the subjective stress experience.

Immediate effects of psychosocial stress on attention depend on subjective experience and not directly on stress-related physiological changes

“…In contrast, high trait anxiety was associated with lower neuroendocrine reactivity during psychosocial stress (Jezova, Makatsori, Duncko, Moncek, & Jakubek, 2004), with the result that higher anxiety was associated with an inability to respond to stress. A recent study, which aimed to explore the relationship between physiological and psychological stress responses, concluded that the emotional experience of stress and the physiological stress response were two dissociated systems (Ali et al, 2017). This result contrasts with what we found; it is likely that the level of anxiety was a more reliable psychological stress marker than the one used in the mentioned work, i.e., mood.…”

“…This issue was discussed by Het, Ramlow, and Wolf (2005) in the field of memory, in which, apparently, the timing of the treatment with respect to the course of the study (before learning vs. before retrieval) is important for evaluating the effect of stress on memory. Similarly, studies in which performance was evaluated when the cortisol concentration was elevated showed a negative correlation between behavioral performance and the cortisol response 2 Both cortisol and heart rate may have positive relationships with attentional performance (Table 1 C, E, c´); however, in the presence of anxiety, these relationships become negative ( , 2008). Furthermore, the effect of psychosocial stress on cognitive function was not present immediately after stress induction but gradually became evident (Plessow, Fischer, Kirschbaum, & Goschke, 2011).…”

“…One of the most common experimental settings for inducing stress is the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) (C. Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993 Although the majority of studies using the TSST have reported physiological and psychological responses, the relationship between both responses in the context of a cognitive task is not yet fully understood. Interestingly, a recent study (Ali, Nitschke, Cooperman, & Pruessner, 2017) proposed the use of a pharmacological procedure to study the effects of the TSST on participants' psychological responses in the absence of physiological responses. The results showed that suppressing the physiological response did not impact the emotional response to the stressor, giving rise to the question of whether the physiological stress response in fact contributes to the emotional experience.…”

Disrupted prefrontal functional connectivity during post-stress adaption in high ruminators

“…As reported in our previous article, we did not observe differences between the groups in heart rate or cortisol, which is in line with the work of Ali et al . (2017), showing a dissociation of the emotional and affective experience of stress in a study with dexamethasone suppression 54 .…”

Risk and resilience in an acute stress paradigm: Evidence from salivary cortisol and time-frequency analysis of the reward positivity

“…The initial saliva samples (saliva sample 1 (SS1), SS2, and SS3 in Figures 1a and 2b) were not included in the cortisol analyses since these samples are likely noisy measures, due to participants having just arrived in the lab and undergone EEG capping and gelling. Moreover, it is typical to include a waiting period after ACUTE STRESS AND REWARD 18 arriving in the lab prior to inducing stress (Ali, Nitschke, Cooperman, & Pruessner, 2017;Pruessner et al, 2008), and we were primarily interested in associations between baseline reward response and cortisol reactivity to stress. Therefore, the first sample following the stressor in the stress condition (SS4), and all subsequent saliva samples, were entered into the models for both groups.…”