Is stressor exposure necessary to produce "stress" effects, or can these effects result from stressor anticipation alone? The present research explores whether it is possible to obtain "stress responses" during and after the period in which stressor exposure is being anticipated. In the first study, the expectation of submerging one's hand in ice water resulted in decreased frustration toleranc...

Environmentally relevant stressors alter the memory-forming process in Lymnaea following operant conditioning of aerial respiration. One such stressor is heat. Previously, we found that following a 1 h heat shock, long-term memory (LTM) formation was enhanced. We also had shown that the heat stressor activates at least two heat shock proteins (HSPs): HSP40 and HSP70. Here, we tested two hypothe...

There is an urgent need for novel treatment strategies for stressor related disorders, particularly depression and anxiety disorders. Indeed, existing drug treatments are only clinically successful in a subset of patients and relapse is common. This likely stems from the fact that stressor disorders are heterogeneous with multiple biological pathways being affected. To this end, the present inv...

Social isolation is a major source of stress and can lead to activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The presence of a close social partner can reduce the magnitude of the HPA-axis response during a stressor, a phenomenon known as social buffering. The oxytocin (OXT) system has been identified as one candidate for mediating social buffering due to its role in the facilitati...

This study examined cortisol reactivity to repeated psychosocial stressors in 35 adolescents and young adults aged 12 to 26 years. Participants were divided into three study groups: controls with no history of major depressive disorder (MDD) or childhood maltreatment (n = 18); a diagnosis of MDD at Time 1 but no history of maltreatment (MDD-only; n = 10); and both MDD and maltreatment (MDD+MALT...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is common to multiple emotional disorders and occurs before, during, and following a stressor. One replicated difference between common forms of RNT such as worry and rumination is temporal orientation towards a stressor, with worry being more future-oriented and rumination more past-oriented. Different mechanisms may drive RNT at the...

Stressor exposure has been shown to enhance host susceptibility and the severity of a plethora of illnesses, including gastrointestinal disease. In mice, susceptibility to Citrobacter rodentium has been shown to be dependent on host genetics as well as the composition of the intestinal microbiota, but the effects of stressor exposure on this gastrointestinal pathogen have not been elucidated fu...

Accidental drug overdose continues to be a substantial cause of mortality for drug users. Characteristics of the neighborhood built environment may be important determinants of the likelihood of drug overdose mortality independent of individual-level factors. Using data from the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, we conducted a multilevel case control study using data on accide...

OBJECTIVES To advance understanding of the relationship between discrimination and sleep duration and difficulties, with consideration of multiple dimensions of discrimination, and attention to concurrent stressors; and to examine the contribution of discrimination and other stressors to racial/ ethnic differences in these outcomes. DESIGN Cross-sectional probability sample. SETTING Chicago...

Department of Infection, Centre for Clinical Microbiology, University College London, London, UK; Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine and Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA; Department of Integrative Physiology and Center for Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309-0354, USA. *Corresponding author. Department o...