Coping under stress: Prefrontal control predicts stress burden during the COVID-19 crisis

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has confronted millions of people around the world with an unprecedented stressor, affecting physical and mental health. Accumulating evidence suggests that emotional and cognitive self-regulation is particularly needed to effectively cope with stress. Therefore, we investigated the predictive value of affective and inhibitory prefrontal control for stress burden during the COVID-19 crisis. Physical and mental health burden were assessed using an online survey, which was administered to 104 participants of an ongoing at-risk birth cohort during the first wave in April 2020. Two follow-ups were carried out during the pandemic, one capturing the relaxation during summer and the other the beginning of the second wave of the crisis. Prefrontal activity during emotion regulation and inhibitory control were assessed prior to the COVID-19 crisis. Increased inferior frontal gyrus activity during emotion regulation predicted lower stress burden at the beginning of the first and the second wave of the crisis. In contrast, inferior and middle frontal gyrus activity during inhibitory control predicted effective coping only during the summer, when infection rates decreased but stress burden remained unchanged. These findings remained significant when controlling for sociodemographic and clinical confounders such as stressful life events prior to the crisis or current psychopathology. We demonstrate that differential stress-buffering effects are predicted by the neural underpinnings of emotion regulation and cognitive regulation at different stages during the pandemic. These findings may inform future prevention strategies to foster stress coping in unforeseen situations

The importance of high quality real-life social interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has brought about dramatic restrictions to real-life social interactions and a shift towards more online social encounters. Positive social interactions have been highlighted as an important protective factor, with previous studies suggesting an involvement of the amygdala in the relationship between social embeddedness and well-being. The present study investigated the effect of the quality of real-life and online social interactions on mood, and explored whether this association is affected by an individual’s amygdala activity. Sixty-two participants of a longitudinal study took part in a one-week ecological momentary assessment (EMA) during the first lockdown, reporting their momentary well-being and their engagement in real-life and online social interactions eight times per day (N ~ 3000 observations). Amygdala activity was assessed before the pandemic during an emotion-processing task. Mixed models were calculated to estimate the association between social interactions and well-being, including two-way interactions to test for the moderating effect of amygdala activity. We found a positive relationship between real-life interactions and momentary well-being. In contrast, online interactions had no effect on well-being. Moreover, positive real-life social interactions augmented this social affective benefit, especially in individuals with higher amygdala being more sensitive to the interaction quality. Our findings demonstrate a mood-lifting effect of positive real-life social interactions during the pandemic, which was dependent on amygdala activity before the pandemic. As no corresponding effect was found between online social interactions and well-being, it can be concluded that increased online social interactions may not compensate for the absence of real-life social interactions

Lifespan adversities affect neural correlates of behavioral inhibition in adults

IntroductionGrowing evidence suggests that adverse experiences have long-term effects on executive functioning and underlying neural circuits. Previous work has identified functional abnormalities during inhibitory control in frontal brain regions in individuals exposed to adversities. However, these findings were mostly limited to specific adversity types such as maltreatment and prenatal substance abuse.MethodsWe used data from a longitudinal birth cohort study (n = 121, 70 females) to investigate the association between adversities and brain responses during inhibitory control. At the age of 33 years, all participants completed a stop-signal task during fMRI and an Adult Self-Report scale. We collected seven prenatal and postnatal adversity measures across development and performed a principal component analysis to capture common variations across those adversities, which resulted in a three-factor solution. Multiple regression analysis was performed to identify links between adversities and brain responses during inhibitory control using the identified adversity factors to show the common effect and single adversity measures to show the specific contribution of each adversity. To find neural correlates of current psychopathology during inhibitory control, we performed additional regression analyses using Adult Self-Report subscales.ResultsThe first adversity factor reflecting prenatal maternal smoking and postnatal psychosocial adversities was related to higher activation during inhibitory control in bilateral inferior frontal gyri, insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and middle temporal gyri. Similar results were found for the specific contribution of the adversities linked to the first adversity factor. In contrast, we did not identify any significant association between brain responses during inhibitory control and the second adversity factor reflecting prenatal maternal stress and obstetric risk or the third adversity factor reflecting lower maternal sensitivity. Higher current depressive symptoms were associated with higher activation in the bilateral insula and anterior cingulate cortex during inhibitory control.ConclusionOur findings extended previous work and showed that early adverse experiences have a long-term effect on the neural circuitry of inhibitory control in adulthood. Furthermore, the overlap between neural correlates of adversity and depressive symptomatology suggests that adverse experiences might increase vulnerability via neural alterations, which needs to be investigated by future longitudinal research

Living and coping with stress: Neuroimaging findings in the framework of an ongoing longitudinal study

The present thesis addresses the complex interplay of environmental adversities, psychopathology, neural development, and coping mechanisms in a longitudinal at-risk cohort study following its participants since birth. Specifically, in study 1, we investigated the long-term impact of life stress at different developmental stages, namely infancy, childhood, and adolescence, on prefrontal brain alterations. Therefore, life stress was recorded in regular intervals starting at the age of 3 months until the age of 25 years by reporting chronic and adverse life events occurring not more than one year prior to the assessment time point. Structural brain imaging was conducted at the age of 25 years. Moreover, depressive symptoms were assessed in young adulthood via self-report. In a sample of 190 healthy adults, increased exposure to life stress in infancy predicted cortical thickness reductions in the orbitofrontal cortex, a key region for affective processing. Neither life stress in childhood nor in adolescence was further related to abnormal brain development. Moreover, increased depressive symptoms in young adulthood were found in those previously exposed to life stress in infancy, and predicted cortical thickness reductions in later life. Finally, a mediation model revealed that depressive symptoms partially mediated the impact of life stress in infancy on abnormal brain maturation in the orbitofrontal cortex at the age of 25 years. Study 2 investigated the predictive value of coping strategies in response to a natural stressor. In more detail, emotion regulation and inhibitory control were assessed in 104 participants during functional neuroimaging prior to the COVID-19 crisis, an unprecedented global stressor affecting physical and mental health. Stress burden due to the pandemic was recorded at three time points during the course of the crisis, that is four weeks after the initial lockdown during the first wave of the pandemic, then during the summertime when restrictions loosened and infection rates went down, and finally at the beginning of the second wave of the pandemic in late 2020 when case numbers exponentially increased. Higher neural activity in the inferior frontal gyrus during emotion regulation predicted less stress burden in consequence of the crisis at the first and second wave of the pandemic, whereas enhanced neural activity of the medial frontal gyrus during inhibitory control predicted diminished stress levels during the summer. These findings hold true after controlling for several important confounders, which were previously linked to stress responsivity. Therefore, adequate emotion regulation is particularly needed in the face of first-level threats, such as emotional distress and acute socio-affective challenges, which were caused by the immediate changes in everyday life at the beginning of the crisis when social contact restrictions were initially installed. In contrast, we propose that effective usage of inhibitory control is required in response to second-level threats, such as dealing with ongoing socio-economic challenges, which were present during the summer. Taken together, our findings highlight the long-term impact of early life stress during infancy on brain structure in adults and point to a critical involvement of internalizing psychopathology. Given the high rates of early life adversities in clinical samples, future prevention strategies are particularly needed to overcome those long-term consequences. In addition, our findings emphasize the importance of effective coping mechanisms, such as adequate emotion regulation and inhibitory control, in response to a natural stressor. Therefore, we suggest early, easy to reach and affordable interventions delivered via smartphone or tablet to foster coping strategies in everyday life

The efficacy, context-depended effects and mechanisms of change of the unified protocol for emotional disorders in children and adolescents - a systematic review and meta-analysis

This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to investigate the efficacy, context-dependent effects and mechanism of change of the Unified Protocol for emotional disorders in children and adolescents (UP-C/UP-A; Ehrenreich-May et al., 2017)

Real-time individual benefit from social interactions before and during the lockdown: the crucial role of personality, neurobiology and genes

Contains fulltext : 246516.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access

Neurostructural traces of early life adversities: A meta-analysis exploring age- and adversity-specific effects

Early life adversities (ELAs) are associated with an increased risk of psychopathology, with studies suggesting a relation to structural brain alterations. Given the recently growing evidence of ELA effects on brain structure, an updated summary is highly warranted. Therefore, anatomical likelihood estimation was used to conduct a coordinate-based meta-analysis of gray matter volume (GMV) alterations associated with ELAs, including sub-analyses for different age groups and maltreatment as specific ELA-type. The analyses uncovered a convergence of pooled ELA-effects on GMV in the right hippocampus and amygdala and the left inferior frontal gyrus, age-specific effects for the right amygdala and hippocampus in children and adolescents, and maltreatment-specific effects for the right perigenual anterior cingulate cortex in adults. These results reveal a possible underlying commonality in the impact of adversity and also point to specific age and maltreatment effects. They suggest neural markers of ELAs in regions involved in socio-emotional functioning and stress regulation, with the potential to be used as targets for interventions designed to buffer or reverse harmful ELA-effects

Neurostructural traces of early life adversities: A meta-analysis exploring age- and adversity-specific effects

Early life adversities (ELAs) are associated with an increased risk of psychopathology, with studies suggesting a relation to structural brain alterations. Given the recently growing evidence of ELA effects on brain structure, an updated summary is highly warranted. Therefore, anatomical likelihood estimation was used to conduct a coordinate-based meta-analysis of gray matter volume (GMV) alterations associated with ELAs, including sub-analyses for different age groups and maltreatment as specific ELA-type. The analyses uncovered a convergence of pooled ELA-effects on GMV in the right hippocampus and amygdala and the left inferior frontal gyrus, age-specific effects for the right amygdala and hippocampus in children and adolescents, and maltreatment-specific effects for the right perigenual anterior cingulate cortex in adults. These results reveal a possible underlying commonality in the impact of adversity and also point to specific age and maltreatment effects. They suggest neural markers of ELAs in regions involved in socio-emotional functioning and stress regulation, with the potential to be used as targets for interventions designed to buffer or reverse harmful ELA-effects