Body Fat is Associated with Decreased Endocrine and Cognitive Resilience to Acute Emotional Stress

*Objective:* Cortisol is elevated both in individuals with increased emotional stress as well as with higher percentages of body fat. Cortisol is also known to affect cognitive performance, particularly spatial processing, selective attention, and working memory. We hypothesized that increased body fat might therefore be associated with decreased performance on a spatial processing task, in response to an acute real-world stressor. 

*Design:* We tested two separate samples of subjects undergoing their first (tandem) skydive. In the first sample (N=78), subjects were tested for salivary cortisol and state-anxiety (Spielberger State Anxiety Scale) during the plane's fifteen-minute ascent to altitude in immediate anticipation of the jump. In a second sample (N=20), subjects were tested for salivary cortisol, as well as cardiac variables (heart rate, autonomic regulation via heart rate variability) and performance on a cognitive task of spatial processing, selective attention, and working memory. 

*Results:* In response to the skydive, individuals with greater body fat percentages showed significantly increased reactivity for both cortisol (on both samples) and cognition, including decreased accuracy of our task of spatial processing, selective attention, and working memory. These cognitive effects were restricted to the stress response and were not found under baseline conditions. There were no body fat interactions with cardiac changes in response to the stressor, suggesting that the cognitive effects were specifically hormone-mediated rather than secondary to general activation of the autonomic nervous system. 

*Conclusions:* Our results indicate that, under real-world stress, increased body fat may be associated with endocrine stress-vulnerability, with consequences for deleterious cognitive performance

STUDIES OF EFFECTS OF GSM-900 MICROWAVE EXPOSURE ON DNA ”MICRONUCLEUS” FORMATION IN MICE

Possible genotoxic effects of microwave exposure from GSM-900 mobile telephones have investigated with in vivo micronucleus assay of mouse erythrocytes from CBA mice and GFAP knockout mice. No significant change in the frequency of erythrocytes with micronuclei neither in the young (polychromatic PCE) or mature (normichromatic NCE) erythrocytes. There is, however, a tendency but not significant to increased MPCE in female mice after 35 days of exposure. There is a marked tendency to lower PCE-fraction in the exposed groups. When male and female is studied separately there is no significant difference. However, if the values are normalised to eliminate the sex-difference there is a significant lower fraction in the exposed mice. Another observation is lower weight of the exposed male. If normalised data for both sexes are pooled there is an almost significant difference (95% level) in weight. We found a less pronounced difference in the CBE mice than in the GFAP experiment. Thus genotype might play a role in microwave exposure. Differences in exposure time and number of controls in GFAP and CBA experiment might influence the results. We observe a moderate decrease of formation of new erythrocytes in the exposed animals. This might fit the tendency of lower weight in the exposed animals and might indicate a general decreased cell-proliferation in the exposed animals

Second-Hand Stress: Neurobiological Evidence for a Human Alarm Pheromone

Alarm pheromones are airborne chemical signals, released by an individual into the environment, which transmit warning of danger to conspecifics via olfaction. Using fMRI, we provide the first neurobiological evidence for a human alarm pheromone. Individuals showed activation of the amygdala in response to sweat produced by others during emotional stress, with exercise sweat as a control; behavioral data suggest facilitated evaluation of ambiguous threat

Acute Stress Eliminates Female Advantage in Detection of Ambiguous Negative Affect

The human stress response evolved to maximize an individual's probability of survival when threatened. The present study addressed whether physical danger modulates perception of an unrelated ambiguous threat and, if so, to what extent this response is sex-specific. The authors utilized a first-time tandem skydive as a stressor, which had been previously validated as producing a highly-controlled, genuinely stressful environment. In a counter-balanced within-subjects design, participants wore a virtual reality helmet to complete an emotion-identification task during the plane's ascent (stress condition) and in the laboratory (control condition). Participants were presented static male faces morphed between 20–80% aggression, which gradually emerged from degraded images. Using a binary forced-choice design, participants identified each ambiguous face as aggressive or neutral. Results showed that participants characterized emotion more rapidly under stress versus control conditions. Unexpectedly, the results also show that while women were more sensitive to affect ambiguity than men under control conditions, they exhibited a marked decrease in sensitivity equivalent to men while under stress