Archival ReportAcute Psychological Stress Reduces Working Memory-Related Activity in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex
Section snippets
Participants
Twenty-nine young, healthy, right-handed female university students (aged 18–25 years) with normal or corrected-to-normal vision participated in this study. Participants reported no history of neurological, psychiatric, or endocrine disease; no current use of any psychoactive drugs or corticosteroids; and no habit of watching violent movies or playing violent video games. None of them had experienced severe physical or emotional trauma. Avoiding confounds related to gender differences and
Subjective and Physiological Measurements of Stress
Subjective negative affect scores at different time points are shown in Figure 1B for the two groups. A 2-by-3 ANOVA with group as the between-subjects factor and time as the within-subjects factor (three post-baseline time points) revealed significant main effects of group [F(1,25) = 18.56, p < .001] and time [F(2,24) = 12.31, p < .001], and a significant interaction effect [F(2,24) = 7.56, p < .003], indicating that stress induction resulted in significantly increased negative affect.
Discussion
We aimed to investigate stress-induced modulations in WM-related prefrontal activity. Results confirmed our hypothesis of reduced WM-related activation in the DLPFC. This reduction was accompanied by less deactivation of brain structures within the DMN. As indicated by increased HR and decreased HRV, our stress induction procedure resulted in a shift toward more sympathetic, and less parasympathetic, autonomic nervous system activity. Moreover, stress induction increased HPA axis activity as
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