Social evaluative threat with verbal performance feedback alters neuroendocrine response to stress.

Laboratory stress tasks such as the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) have provided a key piece to the puzzle for how psychosocial stress impacts the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, other stress-responsive biomarkers, and ultimately wellbeing. These tasks are thought to work through biopsychosocial processes, specifically social evaluative threat and the uncontrollability heighten situational demands. The present study integrated an experimental modification to the design of the TSST to probe whether additional social evaluative threat, via negative verbal feedback about speech performance, can further alter stress reactivity in 63 men and women. This TSST study confirmed previous findings related to stress reactivity and stress recovery but extended this literature in several ways. First, we showed that additional social evaluative threat components, mid-task following the speech portion of the TSST, were still capable of enhancing the psychosocial stressor. Second, we considered stress-reactive hormones beyond cortisol to include dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and testosterone, and found these hormones were also stress-responsive, and their release was coupled with one another. Third, we explored whether gain- and loss-framing incentive instructions, meant to influence performance motivation by enhancing the personal relevance of task performance, impacted hormonal reactivity. Results showed that each hormone was stress reactive and further had different responses to the modified TSST compared to the original TSST. Beyond the utility of showing how the TSST can be modified with heightened social evaluative threat and incentive-framing instructions, this study informs about how these three stress-responsive hormones have differential responses to the demands of a challenge and a stressor.

New techniques for augmenting saliva collection: bacon rules and lozenge drools.

PURPOSE: Saliva is a reliable, noninvasive, and cost-effective alternative to biomarkers measured in other biological fluids. Within certain populations, saliva sampling may be difficult because of insufficient saliva flow, which may compromise disease diagnosis or research integrity. Methods to improve flow rates (eg, administering citric acid, chewing gum, or collecting cotton) may compromise biomarker integrity, especially if the methods involve the presence of a collection aid in the oral cavity. Anecdotal strategies (eg, looking at pictures of food or imagining food) have not been evaluated to date. In this study, we evaluate whether 2 novel collection techniques improve saliva flow or interfere with assay of common biomarkers (ie, cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone, and testosterone). We evaluate an over-the-counter anhydrous crystalline maltose lozenge intended to increase saliva production for patients with xerostomia long after the lozenge dissolves. We then evaluate whether the smell of freshly cooked bacon stimulates a pavlovian-type reflex. METHODS: Saliva was collected from 27 healthy young adults (aged 20-34 years; 12 men) on a basal day and a lozenge day, providing 5 samples at 15-minute intervals. Twenty participants then returned for the bacon day condition, providing 2 saliva samples with an interval of 15 minutes between samples. Collection times required to generate 2 mL of saliva across collection strategies were recorded, and then saliva samples were assayed for cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone, and testosterone. FINDINGS: Repeated analysis of variance measures revealed that both the lozenges and bacon significantly decreased collection time compared with the passive drool collection on the basal day. No significant effects were found related to the quantification of cortisol, testosterone, or dehydroepiandrosterone when comparing lozenge or bacon to the basal day. In addition, bivariate correlations revealed that concentrations from time-matched control samples correlated significantly with concentrations from the lozenge and bacon conditions. IMPLICATIONS: These results indicate that both the lozenge and smelling bacon improve saliva collection times and that neither technique interferes with salivary hormone concentrations. This study reveals new methods to augment saliva collection strategies.

Hormones: commentary. Riding the physiological roller coaster: adaptive significance of cortisol stress reactivity to social contexts.

The authors conjecture that to understand normal stress regulation, including cortisol stress reactivity, it is important to understand why these biomarkers are released and what they function to accomplish within the individual. This perspective holds that high (or rising) cortisol has advantages and disadvantages that must be understood within a context to understand how individual differences unfold. This perspective is juxtaposed with a popular vantage point of this stress hormone or of stress exposure that emphasizes the deleterious consequences or problems of this hormone. While the costs and benefits of cortisol are emphasized for normal stress regulation, this dynamic context-dependent purpose of stress hormones should extend to the development of psychopathology as well. This functional and dynamic view of cortisol is helpful for interpreting why Tackett and colleagues (2014) appear to observe advantageous cortisol recovery from stress in individuals with elevated personality disorder symptoms.