China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Techniques for inducing stress
Published in Philip N. Murphy, The Routledge International Handbook of Psychobiology, 2018
Mark A. Wetherell, Olivia Craw, Michael A. Smith
The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993) combines all three of the identified stressor domains and is associated with consistent, high levels of cortisol responding (Dickerson & Kemeny, 2004). The TSST is perhaps the best-known acute psychological stressor and considered to be the ‘gold standard’ stressor paradigm (Smeets et al., 2012). In addition to being utilised in studies examining deleterious effects of stress, the TSST has also been implemented as an experimental paradigm to investigate different stress buffering effects (e.g. social support and exercise; Rimmele et al., 2007, 2009) as well as the role of stress reactivity in health and illness (e.g. Jessop & Turner-Cobb, 2008; Kudielka et al., 2009). The standard TSST protocol involves participants standing in front of a panel of three white-coat-wearing assessors, and the knowledge that they are being video and audio recorded. Prior to facing the panel, participants are briefed, and instructed to prepare to deliver five minutes of free speech to convince the panel that they are the perfect applicant for a fictional job vacancy. Following a ten-minute preparation period (which also acts as an anticipatory period), participants return to the panel to deliver their five-minute speech. Once the speech is over, the participant is asked to serially subtract 13 from 1,022 as fast and accurately as possible. Each time a mistake is made, they are told to stop and start again from 1,022.
Mindfulness
Published in Hilary McClafferty, Mind–Body Medicine in Clinical Practice, 2018
These results supported findings in a prior randomized study by Rosenkranz et al., which was designed to tease out the specific effect of an 8-week MBSR course versus a health education program designed to mirror MBSR program structure without including mindfulness. The study question was whether mindfulness could buffer the effects of physiologic stress and dermal inflammation in healthy adults and involved 49 adult men. Psychological stress was induced by the modified Trier Social Stress Test as described earlier. The inflammatory stimulus used was topical capsaicin cream at 0.1% concentration. Results showed that those in the MBSR group showed smaller flare reactions to the topical capsaicin irritant compared to controls (Rosenkranz et al. 2013).
Neuropeptide Alterations in Depression and Anxiety Disorders
Published in Siegfried Kasper, Johan A. den Boer, J. M. Ad Sitsen, Handbook of Depression and Anxiety, 2003
David A. Gutman, Dominique L. Musselman, Charles B. Nemeroff
While the exact mechanism contributing to CRF hyperactivity remains obscure, studies from our group and others have documented long-term persistent increases in HPA axis activity and extrahypothalamic CRF neuronal activity after exposure to early untoward life events—for example, neglect, and child abuse, respectively, in both laboratory animals (rat and nonhuman primates) and patients [43,61-63]. Early-life stress apparently permanently sensitizes the HPA axis and leads to a greater risk of developing depression later in life. To measure HPA axis responsivity to stress in humans, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was developed. This laboratory paradigm involves a simulated 10-min public speech and a mental arithmetic task. The TSST has been validated as a potent activator of the HPA axis in humans [64]. Recently, our group has reported increased plasma ACTH and cortisol concentrations, presumably because of hypersecretion of CRF, after exposure to the TSST in women (both depressed and nondepressed) who were exposed to severe physical and emotional trauma as children [65]. The depressed women both with and without early-life stress exhibited a blunted ACTH response to CRF, whereas the women with early trauma alone exhibited an exaggerated ACTH response. These data provide further evidence for functional hyperactivity of CRF systems that may be influenced by early adverse life events.
Childhood maltreatment and within-person associations between cortisol and affective experience
Published in Stress, 2021
Kate Ryan Kuhlman, James L. Abelson, Stefanie E. Mayer, Nirmala Rajaram, Hedieh Briggs, Elizabeth Young
The present study used intensive, repeated measures of cortisol and affective ratings throughout participation in the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). This protocol provided an ideal context in which to interrogate the association between GCs and affective experience because both cortisol and affect exhibit large within- and between-person variability across the session. The extant literature linking biological and psychological responses to stress has focused on between-person associations (i.e. is anxiety highest among the individuals with the highest concentrations of cortisol during the laboratory protocol?). However, between-person analytic approaches neglect to address the role of change within people (i.e. do individuals’ anxiety ratings increase when cortisol increases?). This approach also allowed us to analytically overcome the threat to group-to-individual generalizability crisis that currently plagues translational human subjects research (Fisher et al., 2018). Here, we focused on within-person variability, examining the role of maltreatment in explaining whether within-person changes in anxiety vary as a function of within-person changes in cortisol across the session.
Validity of the Trier Social Stress Test in studying discrimination stress
Published in Stress, 2021
Kate Keenan, Johnny Berona, Alison E. Hipwell, Stephanie D. Stepp, Madelaine T. Romito
To date, only two studies have examined biomarkers of stress reactivity among sexual minority participants, only one of which had a heterosexual comparison group. These studies used modified versions of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) (Kirschbaum et al., 1992). The TSST is the most widely used laboratory-based social evaluative stressor and, in several studies, instructions have been modified to increase the salience of the evaluation context. One study of 74 LGB young adults examined HPA-axis reactivity in response to a modified TSST in which participants discussed an experience in which they experienced rejection based on their sexual orientation (Hatzenbuehler & McLaughlin, 2014). Cortisol levels were inversely related to structural stigma in the states in which participants lived during adolescence. In another study, a convenience sample of 87 Montreal residents completed a modified TSST in which participants delivered a mock job interview speech to judges seated behind a one-way mirror (Juster et al., 2013). Differences by sexual minority status were found to vary by sex and type of biomarker. Among men, sexual minority status was associated with lower overall cortisol levels and higher overall heart rate, but no difference in testosterone or progesterone. Among women, sexual minority status was associated with higher post-TSST cortisol, testosterone, and progesterone levels but not heart rate (Juster et al., 2015, 2016, 2019). Although, the sample was primarily white (70%), strengths of the study include multimodal assessment of stress reactivity and use of a heterosexual comparison group.
The effect of thought importance on stress responses: a test of the metacognitive model
Published in Stress, 2018
Lora Capobianco, Anthony P. Morrison, Adrian Wells
Following these instructions participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST: Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Hellhammer, 1993). The TSST is comprised of two stress tasks: a speech task and a math task. During the speech task, participants are asked to present a five-minute speech on their dream job. Participants are instructed that their speech will be video-taped and rated by a panel of judges; however participants are unaware that there is no tape in the camera and therefore their speech is not being recorded. The second portion of the TSST is a five-minute mental arithmetic task, where participants are required to serially subtract the number 13 from 1022, while the experimenter provided negative feedback by tapping their fingers impatiently. After having completed the stress induction participants then completed their third PANAS rating and second VAS rating.