Acute stress modifies oscillatory indices of affective processing: Insight on the pathophysiology of schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Publication date: Available online 4 December 2018

Source: Clinical Neurophysiology

Author(s): Elizabeth Andersen, Alana Campbell, Susan Girdler, Kelly Duffy, Aysenil Belger

Abstract

Objective

The current study evaluated the differential impact of acute psychosocial stress exposure on oscillatory correlates of affective processing in control participants and patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SCZ) to elucidate the stress-mediated pathway to psychopathology.

Methods

EEG was recorded while 21 control participants and 21 patients with SCZ performed emotional framing tasks (assessing a key aspect of emotion regulation (ER)) before and after a laboratory stress challenge (Trier Social Stress Test). EEG spectral perturbations evoked in response to neutral and aversive stimuli (presented with positive or negative contextual cues) were extracted in theta (4-8Hz) and beta (12-30Hz) frequencies.

Results

Patients demonstrated aberrant theta and beta oscillatory activity, with impaired frontal theta-mediated framing and beta-derived motivated attention processes relative to controls. Following stress exposure, controls exhibited impaired frontal theta-mediated emotional framing, similar to the oscillatory profile observed in patients before stress.

Conclusions

The acute stress-induced oscillatory changes observed in controls were persistently present in patients, indicating an inefficiency of fronto-limbic adaptation to stress exposure.

Significance

Results provide novel insight on the electrophysiological correlates of arousal and affect regulation, which are core homogeneous symptom dimensions shared across neuropsychiatric disorders, and shed light on putative mechanisms in the translation of stress into psychopathology.

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