Rapid volumetric brain changes after acute psychosocial stress.

Stress is an important trigger for brain plasticity: Acute stress can rapidly affect brain activity and functional connectivity, and chronic or pathological stress has been associated with structural brain changes. Measures of structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can be modified by short-term motor learning or visual stimulation, suggesting that they also capture rapid brain changes. Here, we investigated volumetric brain changes (together with changes in T1 relaxation rate and cerebral blood flow) after acute stress in humans as well as their relation to psychophysiological stress measures. Sixty-seven healthy men (25.8±2.7 years) completed a standardized psychosocial laboratory stressor (Trier Social Stress Test) or a control version while blood, saliva, heart rate, and psychometrics were sampled. Structural MRI (T1 mapping / MP2RAGE sequence) at 3T was acquired 45 min before and 90 min after intervention onset. Grey matter volume (GMV) changes were analysed using voxel-based morphometry. Associations with endocrine, autonomic, and subjective stress measures were tested with linear models. We found significant group-by-time interactions in several brain clusters including anterior/mid-cingulate cortices and bilateral insula: GMV was increased in the stress group relative to the control group, in which several clusters showed a GMV decrease. We found a significant group-by-time interaction for cerebral blood flow, and a main effect of time for T1 values (longitudinal relaxation time). In addition, GMV changes were significantly associated with state anxiety and heart rate variability changes. Such rapid GMV changes assessed with VBM may be induced by local tissue adaptations to changes in energy demand following neural activity. Our findings suggest that endogenous brain changes are counteracted by acute psychosocial stress, which emphasizes the importance of considering homeodynamic processes and generally highlights the influence of stress on the brain.

Anger regulation choice-The role of age and habitual reappraisal.

The ability to choose emotion regulation strategies in accordance to contextual demands, known as emotion regulation flexibility, is key to healthy adaptation. While recent investigations on spontaneous emotion regulation choice tested the effects of emotional intensity and age using standardized negative pictures with no particular emotional quality, we elicited the discrete emotion of anger with personally relevant autobiographical memories in a sample of 52 younger and 41 older adults. In addition, we included habitual reappraisal as a predictor of emotion regulation choice. Our main hypothesis was that, compared with younger adults, older adults prefer less resource-demanding emotion regulation strategies (i.e., distraction) over more resource-demanding strategies (i.e., reappraisal), particularly if older adults' habitual reappraisal is low and the to-be-regulated anger is of high intensity. Surprisingly, our findings suggest that only older adults' emotion regulation choices depend on the emotional intensity of the autobiographical memory and habitual reappraisal. Only older adults with high habitual reappraisal preferred to reappraise their anger in situations of low anger intensity but switched to the less demanding strategy of distraction in high anger memories, indicating emotion regulation flexibility. This study extends previous research by testing emotion regulation choices in natural contexts and considering regulation habits. Although we replicate previous findings of emotion regulation flexibility according to emotional intensity in anger memories for older adults with high habitual reappraisal only, our findings illustrate the relevance of reappraisal habits to emotion regulation choice in age-comparative research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Association of peripheral blood pressure with gray matter volume in 19- to 40-year-old adults.

OBJECTIVE: To test whether elevated blood pressure (BP) relates to gray matter (GM) volume (GMV) changes in young adults who had not previously been diagnosed with hypertension (systolic BP [SBP]/diastolic BP [DBP] ≥140/90 mm Hg). METHODS: We associated BP with GMV from structural 3T T1-weighted MRI of 423 healthy adults between 19 and 40 years of age (mean age 27.7 ± 5.3 years, 177 women, SBP/DBP 123.2/73.4 ± 12.2/8.5 mm Hg). Data originated from 4 previously unpublished cross-sectional studies conducted in Leipzig, Germany. We performed voxel-based morphometry on each study separately and combined results in image-based meta-analyses (IBMA) to assess cumulative effects across studies. Resting BP was assigned to 1 of 4 categories: (1) SBP <120 and DBP <80 mm Hg, (2) SBP 120-129 or DBP 80-84 mm Hg, (3) SBP 130-139 or DBP 85-89 mm Hg, (4) SBP ≥140 or DBP ≥90 mm Hg. RESULTS: IBMA yielded the following results: (1) lower regional GMV was correlated with higher peripheral BP; (2) lower GMV was found with higher BP when comparing individuals in subhypertensive categories 3 and 2, respectively, to those in category 1; (3) lower BP-related GMV was found in regions including hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, frontal, and parietal structures (e.g., precuneus). CONCLUSION: BP ≥120/80 mm Hg was associated with lower GMV in regions that have previously been related to GM decline in older individuals with manifest hypertension. Our study shows that BP-associated GM alterations emerge continuously across the range of BP and earlier in adulthood than previously assumed. This suggests that treating hypertension or maintaining lower BP in early adulthood might be essential for preventing the pathophysiologic cascade of asymptomatic cerebrovascular disease to symptomatic end-organ damage, such as stroke or dementia.

A mind-brain-body dataset of MRI, EEG, cognition, emotion, and peripheral physiology in young and old adults.

We present a publicly available dataset of 227 healthy participants comprising a young (N=153, 25.1±3.1 years, range 20-35 years, 45 female) and an elderly group (N=74, 67.6±4.7 years, range 59-77 years, 37 female) acquired cross-sectionally in Leipzig, Germany, between 2013 and 2015 to study mind-body-emotion interactions. During a two-day assessment, participants completed MRI at 3 Tesla (resting-state fMRI, quantitative T1 (MP2RAGE), T2-weighted, FLAIR, SWI/QSM, DWI) and a 62-channel EEG experiment at rest. During task-free resting-state fMRI, cardiovascular measures (blood pressure, heart rate, pulse, respiration) were continuously acquired. Anthropometrics, blood samples, and urine drug tests were obtained. Psychiatric symptoms were identified with Standardized Clinical Interview for DSM IV (SCID-I), Hamilton Depression Scale, and Borderline Symptoms List. Psychological assessment comprised 6 cognitive tests as well as 21 questionnaires related to emotional behavior, personality traits and tendencies, eating behavior, and addictive behavior. We provide information on study design, methods, and details of the data. This dataset is part of the larger MPI Leipzig Mind-Brain-Body database.