Psychophysiological Responses to Stress Related to Anxiety in Healthy Aging
A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) Study
Abstract
Abstract. The aim of the study was to explore the effects of situational stress and anxiety in a group of healthy elderly, both in terms of psychophysiological correlates and cognitive performance. Eighteen participants (Mage = 70 ± 6.3; range 60–85) were assessed for anxiety and were instructed to perform a computerized math task, under both a stressful and a control condition, while near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) signal and electrocardiography (ECG) were recorded. NIRS results evidenced an increased activation of right PFC during the entire procedure, even if effect sizes between left and right channels were larger during the experimental condition. The amount of right activation during the stressful condition was positively correlated with anxiety. Response times (RTs) were slower in more anxious than in less anxious individuals, both during the control and stressful conditions. Accuracy was lower in more anxious than in less anxious individuals, only during the stressful condition. Moreover, heart rate (HR) was not modulated by situational stress, nor by anxiety. Overall, the present study suggests that in healthy elderly, anxiety level has a significant impact on cerebral responses, and both on the amount of cognitive resources and the quality of performance in stressful situations.
References
1992). Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/
. (2016). Could fNIRS promote neuroscience approach in clinical psychology? Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 456. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00456
(2016). Cortical and autonomic patterns of emotion experiencing during a recall task. Journal of Psychophysiology, 114, 38–46. https://doi.org/10.1027/0269-8803/a000183
(2017). Cortical and cardiovascular responses to acute stressors and their relations with psychological distress. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 114, 38–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2017.02.002
(2008). The prevalence of anxiety in older adults: Methodological issues and a review of the literature. Journal of Affective Disorders, 109, 233–250. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2007.11.008
(2010). Psychometric properties and health correlates of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory in Australian community-residing older women. Aging & Mental Health, 14, 247–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607861003587628
(2012). Increased blood pressure reactions to acute mental stress are associated with 16‐year cardiovascular disease mortality. Psychophysiology, 49, 1444–1448. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2012.01463.x
(2015). Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)-Italian version: Regression based norms and equivalent scores. Neurological Sciences, 36, 209–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-014-1921-3
(2002). Anxiety and affective style: Role of prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Biological Psychiatry, 51, 68–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3223(01)01328-2
(1999). The functional neuroanatomy of emotion and affective style. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3, 11–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(98)01265-0
(2005). The Montreal Imaging Stress Task: Using functional imaging to investigate the effects of perceiving and processing psychosocial stress in the human brain. Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 30, 319–325.
(2013). NIRS as a tool for assaying emotional function in the prefrontal cortex. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 770. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00770
(1992). Anxiety and performance: The processing efficiency theory. Cognition & Emotion, 6, 409–434. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699939208409696
(2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional Control Theory. Emotion, 7, 336–353. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.7.2.336
(2011). The NIRS Analysis Package: Noise reduction and statistical inference. PLoS One, 6, e24322. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0024322
(2014). Association between sub-threshold affective symptoms and prefrontal activation in non-clinical population – An NIRS Study. Psychology, 5, 1024–1034. https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2014.59115
(2014). Measuring anxiety in late life: A psychometric examination of the geriatric anxiety inventory and geriatric anxiety scale. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28, 804–811. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.08.001
(2014). Correlation between asymmetry of spontaneous oscillation of hemodynamic changes in the prefrontal cortex and anxiety levels: A near-infrared spectroscopy study. Journal of Biomedical Optics, 19, 027005. https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.19.2.027005
(2015). Psychosocial versus physiological stress – Meta-analyses on deactivations and activations of the neural correlates of stress reactions. NeuroImage, 119, 235–251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.06.059
(2011). Anxiety disorders: New developments in old age. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 19, 301–304. https://doi.org/10.1097/JGP.0b013e31820db34f
(1991). Informed consent: Study of quality of information given to participants in a clinical trial. British Medical Journal, 303(6803), 610–613. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.303.6803.610
(2005). The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, MoCA: A brief screening tool for mild cognitive impairment. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 53, 695–699. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2005.53221.x
(2007). Development and validation of the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory. International Psychogeriatrics, 19, 103–114. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1041610206003504
(2015). Italian Validation of Montreal Cognitive Assessment. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 31, 131–137. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000217
(2018). Cortical hemodynamic changes during the Trier Social Stress Test: An fNIRS study. NeuroImage, 171, 107–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.12.061
(2009). Anxiety symptoms in mild cognitive impairment. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 24, 300–305. https://doi.org/10.1002/gps.2106
(2014). The association between psychosocial stress and mortality is mediated by lifestyle and chronic diseases: The Hoorn Study. Social Science & Medicine, 118, 166–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.009
(2010).
(Effects of aging on activity of the prefrontal cortex and autonomic nervous system during mental stress task . In E. TakahashiD. BruleyEds., Oxygen Transport to Tissue XXXI. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology (Vol. 662, pp. 473–478). Boston, MA: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1241-1_682014). Anxiety and performance: The disparate roles of prefrontal subregions under maintained psychological stress. Cerebral Cortex, 24, 1858–1866. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bht036
(2007). Relation between mental stress-induced prefrontal cortex activity and skin conditions: A near-infrared spectroscopy study. Brain Research, 1184, 210–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2007.09.058
(2008). Effects of fragrance administration on stress-induced prefrontal cortex activity and sebum secretion in the facial skin. Neuroscience Letters, 432, 157–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2007.12.014
(2004). Relation between asymmetry of prefrontal cortex activities and the autonomic nervous system during a mental arithmetic task: Near infrared spectroscopy study. Neuroscience Letters, 369, 69–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2004.07.076
(2014). Kubios HRV – Heart rate variability analysis software. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 113(1), 210–220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2013.07.024
(2010). Are older adults less or more physiologically reactive? A meta-analysis of age-related differences in cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory tasks. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 65B, 154–162. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbp127
(2011). Vulnerability to stress, anxiety, and development of dementia in old age. The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 19, 327–334. https://doi.org/10.1097/JGP.0b013e31820119da
(2008). WHO global report on falls prevention in older age. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. Retrieved from http://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43811
. (2010). Psychometric properties of the geriatric anxiety scale: Comparison to the beck anxiety inventory and geriatric anxiety inventory. Clinical Gerontologist, 34, 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/07317115.2011.524600
(2009). Relationship between scalp potential and autonomic nervous activity during a mental arithmetic task. Autonomic Neuroscience, 146, 81–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autneu.2008.12.005
(