Beta-adrenergic Modulation of Cognitive Flexibility during Stress

Beta-adrenergic Modulation of Cognitive Flexibility during Stress

Stress-induced activation of the locus ceruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system produces significant cognitive and behavioral effects, including enhanced arousal and attention. Improvements in discrimination task performance and memory have been attributed to this stress response. In contrast, for other cognitive functions that require cognitive flexibility, increased activity of the LC-NE system...

Influence of psychosocial stress on cognitive flexibility

Stress impairs cognitive flexibility in infants.

In human adults, learning and memory under acute stress are characterized by an increased use of rigid habitual response strategies at the cost of flexible cognitive strategies. The immediate effects of stress on cognitive functioning early in life are not well understood. Here we show experimentally that acute stress leads human infants to perform habitual behavior rigidly. We found that 15-mo...

Beta-Adrenergic receptor modulation of adipocyte metabolism and growth

β-Adrenergic receptor (βAR) agonists reduce body fat in mammals and birds. Synthetic lipid metabolism is decreased in βAR agonist-treated animals or in agonist-treated adipocytes in vitro. Degradative lipid metabolism is increased by βAR agonists in adipocytes in vitro and in vivo. The βAR agonist effects are blocked by βAR antagonists. In mammalian tissues, there are at least three distinct βA...

Beta-Adrenergic Modulation of Tremor and Corticomuscular Coherence in Humans

Coherence between the bioelectric activity of sensorimotor cortex and contralateral muscles can be observed around 20 Hz. By contrast, physiological tremor has a dominant frequency around 10 Hz. Although tremor has multiple sources, it is partly central in origin, reflecting a component of motoneuron discharge at this frequency. The motoneuron response to ~20 Hz descending input could be altere...