Oxytocin, cortisol, and cognitive control during acute and naturalistic stress

Although stress is a strong risk factor for poor health, especially for women, it remains unclear how stress affects the key neurohormones cortisol and oxytocin, which influence stress-related risk and resilience. Whereas cortisol mediates energy mobilization during stress, oxytocin has anti-inflammatory, anxiolytic, and analgesic effects that support social connection and survival across the lifespan. However, how these neurohormones interrelate and are associated with cognitive control of emotional information during stress remains unclear. To address these issues, we recruited 37 college-aged women (M_age = 19.19, SD = 1.58) and randomly assigned each to a one-hour experimental session consisting of either an acute stress (emotionally stressful video) or control (non-stressful video) condition in a cross-sectional manner across the semester. Salivary cortisol and oxytocin samples were collected at baseline and after the video, at which point participants also completed measures assessing affect and an emotional Stroop task. As hypothesized, the emotional stressor induced negative emotions that were associated with significant elevations in cortisol and faster Stroop reaction times. Moreover, higher baseline oxytocin predicted greater positive affect after the stressor and also better cognitive accuracy on the Stroop. Analyses examining the naturalistic stress effects revealed that basal oxytocin levels rose steeply three weeks before the semester's end, followed by rising cortisol levels one week later, with both neurohormones remaining elevated through the very stressful final exam period. Considered together, these data suggest that women's collective experiences of stress may be potentially buffered by a synchronous oxytocin surge that enhances cognitive accuracy and reduces stress "when the going gets tough".

Dorothea Mary Ross (1923-2019)

Memorializes Dorothea Mary Ross (1923-2019). Dorothea's groundbreaking research career began when she arrived at Stanford University as a graduate student with her younger sister Sheila Ross. Along with Albert Bandura, she co-authored multiple studies in the early 1960s demonstrating the transmission of aggression through observational learning. Dorothea's academic and teaching appointments with Stanford Medical School and University of California-San Francisco Medical Schools brought her into frequent contact with physicians, psychologists, teachers, children, and their common issues. Dorothea received the Society for Pediatric Psychology (SPP) Distinguished Contributions Award in 1979 for exemplifying "the pediatric psychologist as a researcher and a scholar." The award was later renamed the Wright Ross Salk Award for Distinguished Service. Michael Roberts, the 2016 SPP award recipient, described Ross as one of the founding visionaries. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Better cognitive control of emotional information is associated with reduced pro-inflammatory cytokine reactivity to emotional stress

Stress is strongly associated with several mental and physical health problems that involve inflammation, including asthma, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and depression. It has been hypothesized that better cognitive control of emotional information may lead to reduced inflammatory reactivity to stress and thus better health, but to date no studies have examined whether differences in cognitive control predict pro-inflammatory cytokine responses to stress. To address this issue, we conducted a laboratory-based experimental study in which we randomly assigned healthy young-adult females to either an acute emotional stress (emotionally evocative video) or no-stress (control video) condition. Salivary levels of the key pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 were measured before and after the experimental manipulation, and following the last cytokine sample, we assessed participants' cognitive control of emotional information using an emotional Stroop task. We also assessed participants' cortisol levels before and after the manipulation to verify that documented effects were specific to cytokines and not simply due to increased nonwater salivary output. As hypothesized, the emotional stressor triggered significant increases in IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8. Moreover, even in fully adjusted models, better cognitive control following the emotional (but not control) video predicted less pronounced cytokine responses to that stressor. In contrast, no effects were observed for cortisol. These data thus indicate that better cognitive control specifically following an emotional stressor is uniquely associated with less pronounced pro-inflammatory cytokine reactivity to such stress. These findings may therefore help explain why superior cognitive control portends better health over the lifespan.