Psychoneuroendocrinology
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Psychoneuroendocrinology · Jan 2015
Obesity and major depression: Body-mass index (BMI) is associated with a severe course of disease and specific neurostructural alterations.
Obesity is one of the most prevalent somatic comorbidities of major depressive disorder (MDD). Both disorders rank among the leading challenges in public health and have been independently characterized by gray matter alterations in partly overlapping brain structures. Hence, it appears crucial to investigate the possibility of a shared neurostructural correlate of this frequent comorbidity as well as its clinical implications. ⋯ Moreover, obesity and chronicity of disorder seem to share overlapping neurostructural anomalies in prefrontal areas involved in emotion regulation and impulse control. Hence, our data provide evidence for specific morphological alterations underlying this prevalent comorbidity. It further underlines the clinical importance of preventive measures against obesity accompanying MDD treatment.
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Psychoneuroendocrinology · Dec 2014
Global stress response during a social stress test: impact of alexithymia and its subfactors.
Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties in identifying, describing and communicating one's own emotions. Recent studies have associated specific effects of this trait and its subfactors with hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis markers during stress. The aim of this study was to analyze the association between alexithymia and its subfactors with HPA and sympatho-adrenal medullar (SAM) activity. Stress was induced experimentally using a public-speaking paradigm. Salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase (AA), chromogranin A (CgA) and heart rate (HR) were collected during the defined periods of baseline, stress, and recovery in 19 males and 24 female healthy university students. ⋯ Alexithymia and its subfactors were specifically related to cortisol responses. This research should be replicated with more subjects and should take into account more parameters reflecting sympathetic and/or parasympathetic activation, as well as HPA axis. Factors such as coping strategies and the perception of the situation as a challenge have also to be explored.
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Psychoneuroendocrinology · Dec 2014
Cortisol responses to a group public speaking task for adolescents: variations by age, gender, and race.
Laboratory social stress tests involving public speaking challenges are widely used for eliciting an acute stress response in older children, adolescents, and adults. Recently, a group protocol for a social stress test (the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups, TSST-G) was shown to be effective in adults and is dramatically less time-consuming and resource-intensive compared to the single-subject version of the task. The present study sought to test the feasibility and effectiveness of an adapted group public speaking task conducted with a racially diverse, urban sample of U. ⋯ Basal cortisol levels increased with age and participants belonging to U. S. national minorities tended to have either lower basal cortisol or diminished cortisol reactivity compared to non-Hispanic Whites. This protocol facilitates the recruitment of larger sample sizes compared to prior research and may show great utility in answering new questions about adolescent stress reactivity and development.
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Psychoneuroendocrinology · Nov 2014
Clinical TrialWho is stressed? A pilot study of salivary cortisol and alpha-amylase concentrations in agoraphobic patients and their novice therapists undergoing in vivo exposure.
In cognitive behavioural therapy of phobic anxiety, in vivo exposure is considered as an effective treatment strategy. Apparently, it involves the experience of stress and anxiety in patients. Given the therapist's role during exposure sessions, it is conceivable that the performance is also accompanied with the experience of stress in therapists, especially when unversed in conducting psychotherapy. ⋯ In vivo exposure seems to be a demanding intervention not only for the patient, but also for therapists in training. However, it was also demonstrated that physiological and subjective stress rather decrease during the intervention and that both groups rated exposure to be substantially successful. Based on the presented results, another potential factor contributing to the under-usage of exposure treatment is conceivable and needs to be addressed in future research.
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Psychoneuroendocrinology · Nov 2014
Testosterone responses to competition predict decreased trust ratings of emotionally neutral faces.
A wealth of evidence has linked individual differences in testosterone (T) to social, cognitive, and behavioral processes related to human dominance. Moreover, recent evidence indicates that a single administration of T reduces interpersonal trust in healthy young women. ⋯ Results indicated that a rise in T predicted a decrease in trust ratings in men, but not women. These findings provide further support for the idea that competition-induced fluctuations in T may serve to modulate ongoing and/or future social behavior.