Intervention In Stress-related Disorders Research Articles

Psychological trauma and digital interventions: myth of reality?

AbstractThe war in Ukraine caused many people to flee within Ukraine and across Europe. Trauma, separation from family and prolonged uncertainty increase the risk of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression among Ukrainians. The element of time is a critical aspect of intervention in stress-related disorders as an identical intervention may be beneficial or harmful if given at different times, focussing on primary, secondary or tertiary prevention. Recent studies showing the importance of timing of intervention in prevention of PTSD lend further support to the concept of the “golden hours” or “window of opportunity”. Dr. Iryna Frankova will present lessons learned from implementation of this psychological first aid digital intervention of low intensity during the ’golden hours’ following escalation of the war in Ukraine. During the talk she will provide guidance on what should and should not be done for the end users, as well as strengths and limitations of the chatbot intervention.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Acute and repetitive fronto-cerebellar tDCS stimulation improves mood in non-depressed participants

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive form of brain stimulation, which allows for selective inhibition or excitation of neural structures. It has demonstrated some efficacy in the treatment of mood disorders. However, these studies have predominately focused on stimulation of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The cerebellum has an increasingly recognized role in emotional control, affective state, and some psychopathologies. As such, tDCS research into mood modulation needs to expand beyond conventional PFC-focused paradigms. Using a contralateral stimulation electrode placement [anodal left dorsolateral(dl)PFC, cathodal right cerebellum], and a single-blind, repeated-measures design, we initially assessed changes in the mood of healthy participants in response to acute stimulation (n = 44) and three repeated stimulations delivered second-daily (n = 21). In a second experiment, we separately investigated the influence of reversed polarity upon these same measures, in response to acute stimulation (n = 23) and repeated stimulation (n = 11). We observed a systematic elevation of mood in both active conditions following single and repeated tDCS, the latter of which displayed a progressive elevation of mood from baseline. No mood change was noted in response to either single or repeated stimulation in the sham condition. Frontocerebellar tDCS stimulation advantageously influences mood in healthy participants, with an accumulative and potentiated effect following successive stimulations. The possibility that frontocerebellar stimulation may provide a novel therapeutic adjunctive or pre-emptive intervention in stress-related disorders and mood-related psychopathologies should be considered.

The Prefrontal Cortex as a Key Target of the Maladaptive Response to Stress

Research on the detrimental effects of stress in the brain has mainly focused on the hippocampus. Because prefrontal cortex (PFC) dysfunction characterizes many stress-related disorders, we here analyzed the impact of chronic stress in rats on the integrity of the hippocampal-PFC pathway, monitored by behavioral and electrophysiological function and morphological assessment. We show that chronic stress impairs synaptic plasticity by reducing LTP induction in the hippocampal-PFC connection; in addition, it induces selective atrophy within the PFC and severely disrupts working memory and behavioral flexibility, two functions that depend on PFC integrity. We also demonstrate that short periods of stress exposure induce spatial reference memory deficits before affecting PFC-dependent tasks, thus suggesting that the impairment of synaptic plasticity within the hippocampus-to-PFC connection is of relevance to the stress-induced PFC dysfunction. These findings evidence a fundamental role of the PFC in maladaptive responses to stress and identify this area as a target for intervention in stress-related disorders.