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. 2012 Mar;51(3):304-12.
doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2011.12.014. Epub 2012 Feb 1.

Stress reactivity and corticolimbic response to emotional faces in adolescents

Jie Liu  1 , Tara M Chaplin, Fei Wang, Rajita Sinha, Linda C Mayes, Hilary P Blumberg
Affiliations

Stress reactivity and corticolimbic response to emotional faces in adolescents

Jie Liu et al. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2012 Mar.

Abstract

Objective: Adolescence is a critical period in the development of lifelong patterns of responding to stress. Understanding underpinnings of variations in stress reactivity in adolescents is important, as adolescents with altered stress reactivity are vulnerable to negative risk-taking behaviors including substance use, and have increased lifelong risk for psychopathology. Although both endocrinological and corticolimbic neural system mechanisms are implicated in the development of stress reactivity patterns, the roles of these systems and interactions between the systems in reactivity to social stimuli in adolescents are not clear. We investigated the relationship between cortisol response to a laboratory-based social stressor and regional brain responses to emotional face stimuli in adolescents.

Method: Changes in cortisol levels following the Trier Social Stress Test-Child version (TSST-C) were measured in 23 disadvantaged and chronically stressed adolescents who also participated in functional magnetic resonance imaging during processing of emotional faces and structural magnetic resonance imaging. The relationships between changes in cortisol following the TSST-C with regional brain activation during face processing, as well as with regional brain morphology, were assessed.

Results: Cortisol change on the TSST-C showed a significant inverse relationship with left hippocampus response to fearful faces (p < .05, corrected); significant associations with volume were not observed.

Conclusions: Increased cortisol response to the Trier social stressor was associated with diminished response of the left hippocampus to faces depicting fear. This suggests that HPA-corticolimbic system mechanisms may underlie vulnerability to maladaptive responses to stress in adolescents that may contribute to development of stress-related disorders.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure: Drs. Liu, Chaplin, Wang, Sinha, Mayes, and Blumberg report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Inverse Association between Cortisol and Hippocampus and Prefrontal Cortex Responses. Note: The sagittal images display the regions of left hippocampus (left image, x plane −24mm in the Montreal Neurological Institute system) and left rostral prefrontal cortex (right image, x=−14mm) in which response to fearful face stimuli showed an inverse relationship with cortisol level changes on the Trier Social Stress Test. Results are displayed at a threshold of p<0.001 and extent of 20 voxels. The color bar shows the T values. The hippocampus finding survived small volume correction.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Association between Cortisol Change and Activation during Fearful Face Processing. Note: The scatterplot shows the inverse relationship between cortisol change on the Trier Social Stress Test and the parameter estimate of mean signal change to fearful faces in the left hippocampus (r=−0.79, p<0.001).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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