Inflexibly Focused under Stress: Acute Psychosocial Stress Increases Shielding of Action Goals at the Expense of Reduced Cognitive Flexibility with Increasing Time Lag to the Stressor
Inflexibly Focused under Stress: Acute Psychosocial Stress Increases Shielding of Action Goals at the Expense of Reduced Cognitive Flexibility with Increasing Time Lag to the Stressor
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DOI：
10.1162/jocn_a_00024
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发表时间：
2011-11-01
影响因子：
3.2
通讯作者：
Goschke, Thomas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Plessow, Franziska;Fischer, Rico;Goschke, Thomas
动态调整目标屏蔽量以适应不同的情境需求与认知控制的灵活性有关，通常与pFC功能有关。虽然压力荷尔蒙也被发现与前额叶受体相结合，但压力和认知控制之间的联系仍然难以捉摸。在此基础上，我们旨在研究急性社会心理应激对动态控制调节的影响。48名健康的志愿者在接受选择性注意（Simon）涉及反应冲突的任务之前，要么接受一个完善的应激诱导方案（特里尔社会压力测试，TSST），要么接受一个标准化的控制情境。通过分析唾液样本中的游离皮质醇水平和α -淀粉酶活性来监测个体的生理应激反应，结果表明TSST可靠地诱导了内源性应激激素水平的升高。然而，急性压力并不一定会损害认知功能，因为有压力的参与者表现出强烈的目标屏蔽（减少干扰），以降低认知灵活性为代价。重要的是，作为人类的一项新发现，应激对认知功能的影响并不是在应激经历后立即出现，而是随着时间的推移逐渐发展，因此，与下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）应激反应的时间过程平行。此外，反映HPA活动的个体皮质醇水平的总增加，而不是与交感神经活动相关的α -淀粉酶活性的总变化，与最后一个测试块的认知灵活性呈负相关。我们的研究为压力引起的认知灵活性的时间依赖性下降提供了证据，这可能与皮质醇水平的变化有关。
Dynamically adjusting the right amount of goal shielding to varying situational demands is associated with the flexibility of cognitive control, typically linked with pFC functioning. Although stress hormones are found to also bind to prefrontal receptors, the link between stress and cognitive control remains elusive. Based on that, we aimed at investigating effects of acute psychosocial stress on dynamic control adjustments. Forty-eight healthy volunteers were exposed to either a well-established stress induction protocol (the Trier Social Stress Test, TSST) or a standardized control situation before a selective attention (Simon) task involving response conflicts. The individual physiological stress response was monitored by analyzing levels of free cortisol and alpha-amylase activity in saliva samples showing that the TSST reliably induced an increase of endogenous stress hormone levels. Acute stress did not inevitably impair cognitive functioning, however, as stressed participants showed tonically increased goal shielding (to reduce interference) at the expense of decreased cognitive flexibility. Importantly, as a novel finding in humans, stress effects on cognitive functions were not present immediately after the stress experience but developed gradually over time and, therefore, paralleled the time course of the hypothalamuspituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress response. In addition, the total increase of individual cortisol levels reflecting HPA activity, but not the total changes in alpha-amylase activity associated with sympathetic activity, was reversely related to the amount of cognitive flexibility in the final block of testing. Our study provides evidence for a stress-induced time-dependent decrease of cognitive flexibility that might be related to changes in cortisol levels.