Abstract
Acute and chronic stress are important factors in the development of mental disorders. Reliable measurement of stress reactivity is therefore pivotal. Critically, experimental induction of stress often involves multiple “hits” and it is an open question whether individual differences in responses to an earlier stressor lead to habituation, sensitization, or simple additive effects on following events. Here, we investigated the effect of the individual cortisol response to intravenous catheter placement (IVP) on subsequent neural, psychological, endocrine, and autonomous stress reactivity. We used an established psychosocial stress paradigm to measure the acute stress response (Stress) and recovery (PostStress) in 65 participants. Higher IVP‐induced cortisol responses were associated with lower pulse rate increases during stress recovery (b = −4.8 bpm, p = .0008) and lower increases in negative affect after the task (b = −4.2, p = .040). While the cortisol response to IVP was not associated with subsequent specific stress‐induced neural activation patterns, the similarity of brain responses Pre‐ and PostStress was higher IVP‐cortisol responders (t[64] = 2.35, p = .022) indicating faster recovery. In conclusion, preparatory stress induced by IVP reduced reactivity in a subsequent stress task by modulating the latency of stress recovery. Thus, an individually stronger preceding release of cortisol may attenuate a second physiological response and perceived stress suggesting that relative changes, not absolute levels are crucial for stress attribution. Our study highlights that considering the entire trajectory of stress induction during an experiment is important to develop reliable individual biomarkers.
Highlights
Acute stress and possible maladaptive responses such as increased anxiety, extensive rumination and impaired cognitive functioning (Mizoguchi et al, 2000) are important factors in the etiology of affective disorders (McEwen, 2004)
There are numerous variations of protocols across studies and even slight modifications may elicit a preceding cortisol response that alters the baseline state of the HPA axis and thereby influences the individual response to the main experimental stressor (Goodman et al, 2017)
We investigated if individual differences in cortisol responses to intravenous catheter placement (IVP) are associated with altered reactivity to a subsequent psychosocial stress task
Summary
Acute stress and possible maladaptive responses such as increased anxiety, extensive rumination and impaired cognitive functioning (Mizoguchi et al, 2000) are important factors in the etiology of affective disorders (McEwen, 2004). One crucial factor that may influence basal states is the intravenous catheter placement (IVP) for the repeated assessment of serum cortisol levels (Dickerson & Kemeny, 2004; Goodman, Janson, & Wolf, 2017; Kudielka et al, 2004). An unrelated, previously induced cortisol response altered the neural response to the imaging stress task (Zschucke et al, 2015) and other tasks (Maier, Makwana, & Hare, 2015) even up to 60 min later (Joëls, Fernandez, & Roozendaal, 2011) This suggests that a preceding acute cortisol response may have lasting effects on the endocrine, physiological, neural and psychological response to subsequent experimental stressors. According to habituation (Gossett et al, 2018; Juster et al, 2012) or sensitization (Goodman et al, 2017) of the stress system, a stronger IVP-induced cortisol response could either exacerbate or limit the magnitude of a second, task-induced response
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