Cardiac autonomic reactivity and salivary cortisol in men and women exposed to social stressors: relationship with individual ethological profile (original) (raw)
Related papers
The persistent effect of acute psychosocial stress on heart rate variability
The Egyptian Heart Journal
Background As stress occurs repetitively every day, the biological modifiers should also have enough time to restore the normal state of hemostasis; otherwise, chronic stress would be anticipated. The aim of the present study was to examine the persistence of stress based on subjective emotion, salivary cortisol, and linear and non-linear features of heart rate variability (HRV) in both genders. Methods Thirty-three healthy young volunteers (23 men and 10 women) participating in this study were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Moreover, the emotional visual analog scale (EVAS), salivary cortisol, and ECG recording in the rest state were taken before and after TSST as well as 20 min after recovery. Results According to the results of the two-way mixed model ANOVA, all volunteers showed a significant increase in EVAS after TSST which was restored to the baseline state after recovery. Notably, the women’s base of cortisol was significantly higher than men and the standar...
A General Enhancement of Autonomic and Cortisol Responses During Social Evaluative Threat
Psychosomatic Medicine, 2009
Objective: To examine the Social Self Preservation Theory, which predicts that stressors involving social evaluative threat (SET) characteristically activate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The idea that distinct psychosocial factors may underlie specific patterns of neuroendocrine stress responses has been a topic of recurrent debate. Methods: Sixty-one healthy university students (n ϭ 31 females) performed a challenging speech task in one of three conditions that aimed to impose increasing levels of SET: performing the task alone (no social evaluation), with one evaluating observer, or with four evaluating observers. Indices of sympathetic (preejection period) and parasympathetic (heart rate variability) cardiac drive were obtained by impedance-and electrocardiography. Salivary cortisol was used to index HPA activity. Questionnaires assessed affective responses. Results: Affective responses (shame/embarrassment, anxiety, negative affect, and self-esteem), cortisol, heart rate, sympathetic and parasympathetic activation all differentiated evaluative from nonevaluative task conditions (p Ͻ .001). The largest effect sizes were observed for cardiac autonomic responses. Physiological reactivity increased in parallel with increasing audience size (p Ͻ .001). An increase in cortisol was predicted by sympathetic activation during the task (p Ͻ .001), but not by affective responses. Conclusion: It would seem that SET determines the magnitude, rather than the pattern, of physiological activation. This potential to perturb broadly multiple physiological systems may help explain why social stress has been associated with a range of health outcomes. We propose a threshold-activation model as a physiological explanation for why engaging stressors, such as those involving social evaluation or uncontrollability, may seem to induce selectively cortisol release.
Heart rate variability in psychosocial stress : Comparison between laboratory and real-life setting
2016
INTRODUCTION: Heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the important physiological biomarkers which can be used in the context of stress and also as an indicator of cardiovascular health. In this study we aim to investigate autonomic dysregulations of stress reaction previously described in both highly anxious and allergic individuals. Similarities between these two groups were reported on level of subjective perception of stress and neuroendocrine stress reaction. In autonomic nervous system, some studies documented sympathetic hyperactivity in allergy, others found enhanced vagal activation and HRV. Results in highly anxious group document mostly decrease in HRV when compared to low anxiety controls. We assume, that Heart rate and HRV can be used as tools to investigate both sympathetic and vagal induced changes in stress reaction. To assess psychophysiological changes in stress reaction both in laboratory and “real-life” we used both settings and compare the findings in this study....
A series of meta-analyses was undertaken to determine the contributions of sympathetic and parasympathetic activation to cardiovascular stress reactivity. A literature search yielded 186 studies of sufficient quality that measured indices of sympathetic (n = 113) and/or parasympathetic activity (n = 73). A range of psychological stressors perturbed blood pressure and heart rate. There were comparable aggregate effects for sympathetic activation, as indexed by increased plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine, and shortened pre-ejection period, and parasympathetic deactivation, as indexed by heart rate variability measures. Effect size varied with stress task, sex, and age. In contrast to alpha-adrenergic blockade, beta-blockade attenuated cardiovascular reactivity. Cardiovascular reactivity to acute psychological stress would appear to reflect both beta-adrenergic activation and vagal withdrawal to a largely equal extent.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2017
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 (2 mg) the day before, and propranolol (80 mg) 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.
Psychosomatic Medicine, 1995
Human responses to brief psychological stressors are characterized by changes and large individual differences in autonomic, neuroendocrine, and immune function. The authors examined the effects of brief psychological stressors on cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, and cellular immune response in 22 older women to investigate the common effects of stress across systems. They also used interindividual variation in heart rate reactivity, cardiac sympathetic reactivity (as indexed by preejection period reactivity in their reactivity paradigm), and cardiac vagal reactivity (as indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity) to explore the heterogeneity in human responses to brief psychological stressors. The results revealed that brief psychological stressors heightened cardiac activation, elevated plasma catecholamine concentrations, and affected the cellular immune response. It was also found that individuals characterized by high, relative to low, cardiac sympathetic reactivity showed higher stress-related changes in adrenocorticotropic hormone and cortisol plasma levels but comparable changes in epinephrine and norepinephrine concentrations. These data suggest that the effects of psychological stressors on cardiovascular and cellular immune response are governed by coordinated regulatory mechanism(s) and that going beyond the simple notion of heart rate reactivity to examine neural substrates may shed light on the interrelationships among and the regulatory mechanisms for the autonomic, endocrine, and immune responses to stressors.
Cardiovascular reactivity to simulated social stress
Stress Medicine, 1999
This study tested the hypotheses that blood pressure reactivity to simulated social stress would be positively correlated with resting pCO 2 and with increased variability of blood pressure in the natural environment. Sixty white and black men and women participated in a role-playing task involving scenarios describing common infringements of their rights. Blood pressure was higher during the role playing task than during a preceding structured interview and an intervening rest period, and decreased after role playing. Heart rate changes were small by comparison, though heart rate reactivity of women was greater than that of men. Blood pressure reactivity was not correlated with resting pCO 2 and was inversely correlated with ambulatory systolic blood pressure variability. Resting pCO 2 was, however, correlated with mean 24-h ambulatory systolic and diastolic blood pressure. This study con®rms that social stress elevated blood pressure acutely via a vascular mechanism, is consistent with the view that hyperresponsive individuals tend to avoid arousing situations, and further implicates pCO 2 in long-term blood pressure regulation.
Hypertension, 2005
Elevated psychosocial stress might favor the occurrence of cardiovascular disease; however, mechanisms are incompletely understood. We hypothesized that patients (n=126; 44±1 years of age) referred to an internal medicine clinic because of symptoms related to chronic psychosocial stress would demonstrate signs of autonomic dysregulation compared with controls (n=132; 42±1 years of age). We used autoregressive spectral analysis of RR interval variability to obtain indirect markers of sympathetic and of vagal (respectively, low-frequency and high-frequency components, both expressed in normalized units) oscillatory modulation of sinoatrial node, as well as of sympathetic vasomotor regulation (low-frequency component of systolic arterial pressure variability) and of cardiac baroreflex sensitivity (α-index). Higher values of systolic and diastolic arterial pressure (respectively, 124±1 versus 117±1 mm Hg and 80±1 versus 75±1 mm Hg; both P <0.001), altered markers of autonomic regulat...