Neural predictors of the acute stress response

Short-term laboratory stressors such as the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) are implemented in order to investigate the acute stress response under experimentally controlled conditions. Studies typically report that approx. 20 – 30 % of participants do not show a substantial physiological stress response as measured by cortisol. Intriguingly, a lack of response does not appear to be simply coupled with a lack of subjective stress appraisal. Although exploring the influence of factors such as age, gender, and personality traits has provided some insight into variation of response, stress response variability, to date, cannot yet be successfully explained. This project aims to explore whether neural substrates, as measured by EEG, MRI, and fMRI can improve predictor models of the acute stress response in healthy individuals. The current investigation examines whether task-independent neural markers in neural networks associated with socio-emotional processing and regulation are indicative of the physiological response to stress. This work will be extended in the future to incorporate neural reactivity to tasks known to be associated with the stress networks, such as threat sensitivity and emotional regulation, in order to provide a more comprehensive evaluation of the neural signatures of responses to acute psychosocial stressors.