scholarly journals Physiological Resonance in Empathic Stress: Insights from Nonlinear Dynamics of Heart Rate Variability

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 2081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estelle Blons ◽  
Laurent M. Arsac ◽  
Eric Grivel ◽  
Veronique Lespinet-Najib ◽  
Veronique Deschodt-Arsac
Keyword(s):  
Nonlinear Dynamics ◽  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Resonance State ◽  
Trier Social Stress Test ◽  
Resonance Phenomenon ◽  
Multiscale Entropy

Because most humans live and work in populated environments, researchers recently took into account that people may not only experience first-hand stress, but also second-hand stress related to the ability to empathically share another person’s stress response. Recently, researchers have begun to more closely examine the existence of such empathic stress and highlighted the human propensity to physiologically resonate with the stress responses of others. As in case of first-hand stress, empathic stress could be deleterious for health if people experience exacerbated activation of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal and autonomic nervous systems. Thus, exploring empathic stress in an observer watching someone else experiencing stress is critical to gain a better understanding of physiological resonance and conduct strategies for health prevention. In the current study, we investigated the influence of empathic stress responses on heart rate variability (HRV) with a specific focus on nonlinear dynamics. Classic and nonlinear markers of HRV time series were computed in both targets and observers during a modified Trier social stress test (TSST). We capitalized on multiscale entropy, a reliable marker of complexity for depicting neurovisceral interactions (brain-to-heart and heart-to-brain) and their role in physiological resonance. State anxiety and affect were evaluated as well. While classic markers of HRV were not impacted by empathic stress, we showed that the complexity marker reflected the existence of empathic stress in observers. More specifically, a linear model highlighted a physiological resonance phenomenon. We conclude on the relevance of entropy in HRV dynamics, as a marker of complexity in neurovisceral interactions reflecting physiological resonance in empathic stress.

Paranoid Delusions as an Adaptive Response to Social Evaluative Stress?

2018 ◽  
Vol 226 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Clamor ◽  
Katarina Krkovic
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Negative Reinforcement ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Trier Social Stress Test ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Social Stressors ◽  
Physiological Homeostasis ◽  
Abstract Learning

Abstract. Learning mechanisms may serve as a framework for understanding the formation of paranoia. Specifically, if paranoid thoughts after social stressors produce a short-term benefit for coping (e.g., downregulating arousal), the encountered negative reinforcement could lead to their excessive application and subsequently to long-term maladaptive convictions. The Trier Social Stress Test was utilized in healthy participants to examine this putative benefit. Participants rated paranoia at baseline and after the stressor. Subjective stress levels, negative affect, heart rate, and heart rate variability were assessed in the following rest phase (N = 59). Semipartial correlations showed that participants who responded with larger increases in paranoia were characterized by a lower heart rate in the subsequent rest phase. No associations were found with heart rate variability or psychological measures. Thus, paranoid thinking in healthy individuals could be an adaptive means for reestablishing some aspects of physiological homeostasis after a social stressor but further research is needed.

scholarly journals The persistent effect of acute psychosocial stress on heart rate variability

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alireza Mohammadi ◽  
Asgar Emamgoli ◽  
Marjan Shirinkalam ◽  
Golam Hossein Meftahi ◽  
Keyvan Yagoobi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Salivary Cortisol ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Mixed Model ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Trier Social Stress Test ◽  
Linear Features ◽  
Non Linear

Abstract Background As stress occurs repetitively every day, the biological modifiers should also have enough time to restore the normal state of hemostasis; otherwise, chronic stress would be anticipated. The aim of the present study was to examine the persistence of stress based on subjective emotion, salivary cortisol, and linear and non-linear features of heart rate variability (HRV) in both genders. Methods Thirty-three healthy young volunteers (23 men and 10 women) participating in this study were exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Moreover, the emotional visual analog scale (EVAS), salivary cortisol, and ECG recording in the rest state were taken before and after TSST as well as 20 min after recovery. Results According to the results of the two-way mixed model ANOVA, all volunteers showed a significant increase in EVAS after TSST which was restored to the baseline state after recovery. Notably, the women’s base of cortisol was significantly higher than men and the standard range of kit. Cortisol elevation was only observed in the men, and the significant increase of LF/HF ratio was observed in the women, while both did not retain to the baseline after recovery. The SD1 of Poincaré plot and spectral entropy decreased after stress in both genders. Moreover, there was a significant negative correlation between baseline level of cortisol and its elevation due to stress and some features of HRV. Conclusion The base of cortisol played a critical role in modifying the physiological response to stress. In addition, after recovery, no stressful emotion remained, while the non-linear features of HRV did not return to baseline.

scholarly journals Gender Differences in Stress Responses during a Virtual Reality Trier Social Stress Test

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Santl ◽  
Youssef Shiban ◽  
Andreas Plab ◽  
Stefan Wüst ◽  
Brigitte M. Kudielka ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Heart Rate ◽  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Trier Social Stress Test ◽  
Cortisol Responses ◽  
Electrodermal Reactivity

The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is commonly used to induce stress in laboratories by instructing participants to deliver a speech and to solve arithmetic tasks in front of a committee. Its implementation in virtual reality (VR) enables an investigation of stress responses under highly standardized controllable conditions. The aim of this study was to compare stress responses among men and women in a VR version of the TSST (VR-TSST). To this end, 16 women taking oral contraceptives and 16 men underwent the VR-TSST in a modified version including a competitor. Stress ratings, heart rate, electrodermal reactivity, and salivary cortisol responses were analyzed. The VR-TSST induced endocrine, peripher-physiological and self-reported stress responses, indicated by a significant increase in heart rate, electrodermal activity and stress ratings as well as a small but significant cortisol response. Significant gender differences were found only for stress ratings. In conclusion, these findings confirm earlier results that VR is suitable to induce social stress both in males and females.

scholarly journals Enduring effect of childhood maltreatment on cortisol and heart rate responses to stress: The moderating role of severity of experiences

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (02) ◽  
pp. 497-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Ouellet-Morin ◽  
Marie-Pier Robitaille ◽  
Stéphanie Langevin ◽  
Christina Cantave ◽  
Mara Brendgen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Childhood Maltreatment ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Sociodemographic Factors ◽  
Trier Social Stress Test ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Cortisol Responses

AbstractThere is a relative consensus about the detrimental impact of childhood maltreatment on later mental health problems and behavioral difficulties. Prior research suggests that neurophysiological stress mechanisms may partly mediate this association. However, inconsistent findings regarding hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and sympathetic responses to stress complicate this investigation. Furthermore, the concordance in these two stress systems is not well understood. We tested whether the severity of maltreatment affected the association between maltreatment and cortisol and heart rate (HR) stress responses and the symmetry of these responses. Participants were 155 males (56 maltreated and 99 controls) aged 18 to 35 years. Cortisol and HR were measured in response to the Trier Social Stress Test. Childhood maltreatment, sociodemographic factors, and health-related factors were measured using self-reported questionnaires. Maltreated participants had higher cortisol responses to stress in comparison to controls. However, a shift from moderate to lower to higher cortisol responses was noted as the severity of the experiences increased. Participants exposed to more experiences of maltreatment also showed a greater symmetry between cortisol and HR stress responses. Our findings provide further support for persistent dysregulation of the HPA axis following childhood maltreatment, of which the expression and symmetry with the sympathetic system may change according to the severity of experiences.

scholarly journals Influence of a Suggestive Placebo Intervention on Psychobiological Responses to Social Stress

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Zimmermann-Viehoff ◽  
Nico Steckhan ◽  
Karin Meissner ◽  
Hans-Christian Deter ◽  
Clemens Kirschbaum
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Salivary Cortisol ◽  
Psychosocial Stress ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Alpha Amylase ◽  
Subjective Stress ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Placebo Intervention

We tested the hypothesis that a suggestive placebo intervention can reduce the subjective and neurobiological stress response to psychosocial stress. Fifty-four healthy male subjects with elevated levels of trait anxiety were randomly assigned in a 4:4:1 fashion to receive either no treatment (n = 24), a placebo pill (n = 24), or a herbal drug (n = 6) before undergoing a stress test. We repeatedly measured psychological variables as well as salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase, and heart rate variability prior to and following the stress test. The stressor increased subjective stress and anxiety, salivary cortisol, and alpha-amylase, and decreased heart rate variability (all P < .001). However, no significant differences between subjects receiving placebo or no treatment were found. Subjects receiving placebo showed increased wakefulness during the stress test compared with no-treatment controls ( P < .001). Thus, the suggestive placebo intervention increased alertness, but modulated neither subjective stress and anxiety nor the physiological response to psychosocial stress.

scholarly journals Nonlinearities of heart rate variability in animal models of impaired cardiac control: contribution of different time scales

2017 ◽  
Vol 123 (2) ◽  
pp. 344-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Eduardo Virgilio Silva ◽  
Renata Maria Lataro ◽  
Jaci Airton Castania ◽  
Carlos Alberto Aguiar Silva ◽  
Helio Cesar Salgado ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nonlinear Dynamics ◽  
Heart Rate ◽  
Heart Rate Variability ◽  
Time Scales ◽  
Multiscale Entropy ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
Cardiac Control ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Nonlinear Features ◽  
Short Time

Heart rate variability (HRV) has been extensively explored by traditional linear approaches (e.g., spectral analysis); however, several studies have pointed to the presence of nonlinear features in HRV, suggesting that linear tools might fail to account for the complexity of the HRV dynamics. Even though the prevalent notion is that HRV is nonlinear, the actual presence of nonlinear features is rarely verified. In this study, the presence of nonlinear dynamics was checked as a function of time scales in three experimental models of rats with different impairment of the cardiac control: namely, rats with heart failure (HF), spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs), and sinoaortic denervated (SAD) rats. Multiscale entropy (MSE) and refined MSE (RMSE) were chosen as the discriminating statistic for the surrogate test utilized to detect nonlinearity. Nonlinear dynamics is less present in HF animals at both short and long time scales compared with controls. A similar finding was found in SHR only at short time scales. SAD increased the presence of nonlinear dynamics exclusively at short time scales. Those findings suggest that a working baroreflex contributes to linearize HRV and to reduce the likelihood to observe nonlinear components of the cardiac control at short time scales. In addition, an increased sympathetic modulation seems to be a source of nonlinear dynamics at long time scales. Testing nonlinear dynamics as a function of the time scales can provide a characterization of the cardiac control complementary to more traditional markers in time, frequency, and information domains. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Although heart rate variability (HRV) dynamics is widely assumed to be nonlinear, nonlinearity tests are rarely used to check this hypothesis. By adopting multiscale entropy (MSE) and refined MSE (RMSE) as the discriminating statistic for the nonlinearity test, we show that nonlinear dynamics varies with time scale and the type of cardiac dysfunction. Moreover, as complexity metrics and nonlinearities provide complementary information, we strongly recommend using the test for nonlinearity as an additional index to characterize HRV.

Meta-analysis of the effectiveness of the Trier Social Stress Test in eliciting physiological stress responses in children and adolescents

2020 ◽  
Vol 116 ◽  
pp. 104582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica A. Seddon ◽  
Violeta J. Rodriguez ◽  
Yannick Provencher ◽  
Jacquelyn Raftery-Helmer ◽  
Jacqueline Hersh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Physiological Stress ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Trier Social Stress Test

scholarly journals Does Psychosocial Stress Impact Cognitive Reappraisal? Behavioral and Neural Evidence

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 1803-1816 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maheen Shermohammed ◽  
Pranjal H. Mehta ◽  
Joan Zhang ◽  
Cassandra M. Brandes ◽  
Luke J. Chang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Psychosocial Stress ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Acute Stress ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Cognitive Reappraisal ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Trier Social Stress Test ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Stress Group

Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is regarded as an effective emotion regulation strategy. Acute stress, however, is believed to impair the functioning of prefrontal-based neural systems, which could result in lessened effectiveness of CR under stress. This study tested the behavioral and neurobiological impact of acute stress on CR. While undergoing fMRI, adult participants ( n = 54) passively viewed or used CR to regulate their response to negative and neutral pictures and provided ratings of their negative affect in response to each picture. Half of the participants experienced an fMRI-adapted acute psychosocial stress manipulation similar to the Trier Social Stress Test, and a control group received parallel manipulations without the stressful components. Relative to the control group, the stress group exhibited heightened stress as indexed by self-report, heart rate, and salivary cortisol throughout the scan. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that reappraisal success was equivalent in the control and stress groups, as was electrodermal response to the pictures. Heart rate deceleration, a physiological response typically evoked by aversive pictures, was blunted in response to negative pictures and heightened in response to neutral pictures in the stress group. In the brain, we found weak evidence of stress-induced increases of reappraisal-related activity in parts of the PFC and left amygdala, but these relationships were statistically fragile. Together, these findings suggest that both the self-reported and neural effects of CR may be robust to at least moderate levels of stress, informing theoretical models of stress effects on cognition and emotion.

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