Psychosocial stress affects attentional control and neural oscillatory activity

Abstract

Every day we have to divide our limited attentional resources into different external and internal demands. Considering that psychosocial stress promotes the allocation of attentional resources to threat-related stimuli such as the social evaluation, the aim of the study is (1) to investigate if psychosocial stress affects the behavioral performance in an attentional shifting task and (2) to search, under an exploratory approach, some of its neural correlates. 40 healthy participants were exposed to either an electroencephalogram-compatible version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or a control protocol. Additionally, immediately before and after these protocols, subject participated in the attentional shifting task. Manipulation checks were verified through the changes of the heart rate, salivary concentration of cortisol and the score in the anxiety scale in the “stress” condition respect the control. When we compared the behavioral performance in the attentional task prior and after both conditions, we found that the control group showed a clear improvement in performance, characterized by a relative increase of correct trials and a decrease of omissions. Analogously, after the TSST, participants showed a decreases of the correct trials and an increase of omissions. In addition to behavioral results, we found that the oscillatory activity in alpha (8–12 Hz) and gamma bands (30–70 Hz) were different in both conditions. Behavioral and electrophysiological results, suggest that psychosocial stress directs the attention internally, limiting the attentional resources for attending the external demands and inducing cognitive failures.