Perfusion Functional MRI Reveals Cerebral Blood Flow Pattern under Psychological Stress

Despite the prevalence of stress in everyday life and its impact on happiness, health, and cognition, little is known about the neural substrate of the experience of everyday stress in humans. We use a quantitative and noninvasive neuroimaging technique, arterial spin-labeling perfusion MRI, to meas...

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Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 102; no. 49; pp. 17804 - 17809
Main Authors Jiongjiong Wang, Hengyi Rao, Gabriel S. Wetmore, Patricia M. Furlan, Marc Korczykowski, Dinges, David F., Detre, John A.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 06.12.2005
National Acad Sciences
Subjects
Adult
Anxiety
Anxiety - physiopathology
Biological Sciences
Brain - blood supply
Brain - physiopathology
Brain research
Cerebrovascular Circulation - physiology
Female
Frustration
Heart Rate
Humans
Hydrocortisone - metabolism
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Mathematics
Monitoring, Physiologic
Neurology
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Observational research
Perfusion
Pixels
Prefrontal cortex
Psychological stress
Psychology
Regression analysis
Stress
Stress, Psychological - physiopathology
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Summary:Despite the prevalence of stress in everyday life and its impact on happiness, health, and cognition, little is known about the neural substrate of the experience of everyday stress in humans. We use a quantitative and noninvasive neuroimaging technique, arterial spin-labeling perfusion MRI, to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes associated with mild to moderate stress induced by a mental arithmetic task with performance monitoring. Elicitation of stress was verified by self-report of stress and emotional state and measures of heart rate and salivary-cortisol level. The change in CBF induced by the stress task was positively correlated with subjective stress rating in the ventral right pref rontal cortex (RPFC) and left insula/putamen area. The ventral RPFC along with right insula/putamen and anterior cingulate showed sustained activation after task completion in subjects reporting a high stress level during arithmetic tasks. Additionally, variations of baseline CBF in the ventral RPFC and right orbitofrontal cortex were found to correlate with changes in salivary-cortisol level and heart rate caused by undergoing stress tasks. We further demonstrated that the observed right prefrontal activation could not be attributed to increased cognitive demand accompanying stress tasks and extended beyond neural pathways associated with negative emotions. Our results provide neuroimaging evidence that psychological stress induces negative emotion and vigilance and that the ventral RPFC plays a key role in the central stress response.
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To whom correspondence may be addressed at: Center for Functional Neuroimaging, University of Pennsylvania, 3 West Gates, 3400 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. E-mail: wangj3@mail.med.upenn.edu or detre@mail.med.upenn.edu.
Conflict of interest statement: No conflicts declared.
This paper was submitted directly (Track II) to the PNAS office.
Edited by Bruce S. McEwen, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, and approved October 18, 2005
Author contributions: J.W., G.S.W., P.M.F., D.F.D., and J.A.D. designed research; J.W., H.R., G.S.W., P.M.F., and M.K. performed research; J.W., H.R., and M.K. analyzed data; and J.W., H.R., P.M.F., M.K., D.F.D., and J.A.D. wrote the paper.
Abbreviations: ACC, anterior cingulate cortex; AUC, area under the curve; CBF, cerebral blood flow; fMRI, functional MRI; GLM, general linear model; LIn/Pu, left insula/putamen; ROI, region of interest; RPFC, right prefrontal cortex.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0503082102