Jens C Pruessner's research while affiliated with Universität Konstanz and other places
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Publications (387)
White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) are radiological abnormalities reflecting cerebrovascular dysfunction detectable using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). WMHs are often present in individuals at the later stages of the lifespan and in prodromal stages in the Alzheimer’s Disease spectrum. Tissue alterations underlying WMHs may include demyelinat...
In our transdiagnostic model we suggest that effects of classic psychedelics on mitochondria may substantially explain their benefits for psychiatric and somatic disorders. We present preliminary results on the evolution of brain mitochondria and brain haemodynamic activity, and their relationship during psilocybin assisted psychotherapy.
To date, 72 % of the world's population has received at least one COVID-19 vaccination. The number of antibodies produced by some individuals is exponentially higher than in others, for various mostly unknown reasons. This variation causes great diversity in the future susceptibility to infection by the original or variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus....
The hypothalamus and pituitary regulate, amongst other functions, third order endocrine systems, and their volumes have been associated with normal and pathological outcomes. Yet, there are very few studies that examine their combined structural variations in vivo. This is due, in part, to their small size and a lack of comprehensive image segmenta...
While many studies investigated basic facets of empathy, less is known about the association with early life adversity (ELA). To investigate a possible association of empathy with ELA, we assessed self-reported ELA, using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) for mother and father, and empathy, using the In...
Objectives:
This article aimed to carry out a narrative literature review of early diagnostic markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) based on both micro and macro levels of pathology, indicating the shortcomings of current biomarkers and proposing a novel biomarker of structural integrity that associates the hippocampus and adjacent ventricle togethe...
Introduction: Research on stress-related disorders and brain imaging suggests that (acute) stress might impact the capacity to mentally simulate specific episodic future events (EFT) through the effects of cortisol on brain regions supporting this cognitive function, such as the prefrontal cortices. This study aims to examine the mechanisms underly...
The autonomic nervous system and the neuroendocrine system enable the body to switch between states of “fight/flight/freeze” and of “rest/digest” when coping with stressors or during recovery.
The “rest/digest” or "relaxation" response, is crucial for regeneration processes, physiological homeostasis, and sustainment of physiological and psychologi...
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable mortality worldwide. Since current smoking cessation aids show only modest efficacy, new interventions are needed. Given the evidence that stress is a potent trigger for smoking, the present randomized clinical trial tested whether stress could augment the effects of a memory updating (retrieval-extin...
Empathy, the ability to understand the feelings of other people, is critical for navigating our social world and maintaining social connections. Given that acute stress, and resulting increased glucocorticoids, triggers a shift in two large-scale brain networks, prioritizing salience over executive control, we predicted that acute psychosocial stre...
The cortisol awakening response (CAR) is frequently assessed in psychobiological (stress) research. Obtaining reliable CAR data, however, requires careful attention to methodological detail. To promote best practice, expert consensus guidelines on the assessment of the CAR were published (Stalder et al., 2016, PNEC). However, it is unclear whether...
Importance:
Preventive trials of anti-amyloid agents might preferably recruit persons showing earliest biologically relevant β-amyloid (Aβ) binding on positron emission tomography (PET).
Objective:
To investigate the timing at which Aβ-PET binding starts showing associations with other markers of Alzheimer disease.
Design, setting, and particip...
Importance:
National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer's Association (NIA-AA) workgroups have proposed biological research criteria intended to identify individuals with preclinical Alzheimer disease (AD).
Objective:
To assess the clinical value of these biological criteria to identify older individuals without cognitive impairment who are at near-te...
While many studies investigated basic facets of empathy, less is known about the association with early life adversity (ELA). To investigate a possible association of empathy with ELA, we assessed self-reported ELA, using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) for mother and father, and empathy, using the In...
An adequate response to environmental demands and the initiation of regenerative processes is crucial for survival. While glucose intake increases the endocrine stress reactivity, it is unclear whether glucose also impacts physiological reactivity in response to regenerative processes. To address this question, this study examined the effects of gl...
Growing evidence suggests that natural environments – whether in outdoor or indoor settings – foster psychological health and physiological relaxation, indicated by increased wellbeing, reduced stress levels, and increased parasympathetic activity. Greater insight into differential psychological aspects modulating psychophysiological responses to n...
The stress systems are powerful mediators between the organism's systemic dynamic equilibrium and changes in its environment beyond the level of anticipated fluctuations. Over- or under-activation of the stress systems' responses can impact an animal's health, survival and reproductive success. While physiological stress responses and their influen...
The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is a reliable and efficient protocol to induce acute psychosocial stress in the laboratory. If circumstances do not allow in-person assessments, an online version of the TSST could create more flexible research opportunities. To date, studies have confirmed subjective and autonomic stress responses to online TSST...
The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is a reliable and efficient protocol to induce acute psychosocial stress in the laboratory. If circumstances do not allow in-person assessments, an online version of the TSST (TSST-OL) could create more flexible research opportunities. To date, studies have confirmed subjective and autonomic stress responses to T...
Efficient movement selection is crucial in everyday activities. Whether this function is governed by our stress system is so far unknown. In the current study, data from thirty-six young male adults were analyzed. They performed rule- and plan-based movement selection tasks before (session 1) and after (session 2) a psychosocial stressor, or after...
Probiotics are suggested to impact physiological and psychological stress responses by acting on the gut-brain axis. We investigated if a probiotic product containing Bifidobacterium longum R0175, Lactobacillus helveticus R0052 and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum R1012 affected stress processing in a double-blinded, randomised, placebo-controlled, cr...
Objective:
Daily life stressors include everyday irritants, hassles, and inconveniences, such as problems in traffic, and unexpected work deadlines. A growing body of research has suggested higher daily stress is associated with blunted cortisol response to acute psychosocial stressors. However, so far, the neural mechanism underlying this associa...
Sex and gender are dissociable, multi-component variables. Focusing on the analytic problems associated with dichotomising continuous variables, we synthesize a new approach to collecting and analysing sex and gender data in health research, in contrast to the conventional use of dichotomous tickboxes to code sex/gender.Methods. Using a literature...
Decomposing the structure of human cerebral function in its domains, such as affect regulation or cognition, forms the backbone of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Research continues to decipher the domains and hierarchical structure of cerebral function. So far, the findings strongly suggest two higher-order latent factors of general psychopat...
Objective:
The renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) plays a relevant role in regulating blood pressure and thus maintaining cardiovascular homeostasis. While it was recently shown that RAAS parameters are responsive to acute psychosocial stress, the psychobiological determinants of the acute stress-induced RAAS activation have not yet been...
The stress response supports survival through energy mobilization. Paradoxically, a low blood glucose level dampens the endocrine stress response, and sugar consumption prior to stress restores it. Thus, energy availability may play a causal role in the endocrine stress response. Yet, it has never been tested whether sweet taste or expectations tow...
Individuals with a history of low maternal care (MC) frequently present a blunted, yet sometimes also show an increased cortisol stress response. Fasted individuals with low blood glucose levels who are exposed to acute stress typically show an attenuated response pattern in this endocrine marker. Despite well-documented metabolic dysregulations af...
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Physiological synchrony (PS) is defined as the co-occurrence and interdependence of physiological activity between interaction partners. Previous research has uncovered numerous influences on the extent of PS, such as relationship type or individual characteristics. Here, we investigate the influence of acute stress on PS. We do so in a setting in...
Background
The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is a well-established, standardized protocol to induce acute psychosocial stress in the laboratory. Yet not all circumstances allow in-person assessments; thus, an online version of the TSST (TSST-OL) is needed. In this pilot study, we aimed to validate a TSST-OL for adults.
Methods
N=21 adults (90.48...
Hyperreactivity to stress may be one explanation for the increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in individuals with essential hypertension. We investigated blood lipid reactivity to the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST), a psychosocial stressor, in hypertensive and normotensive men and tested for prospective associations with biological r...
Zusammenfassung
Das elterliche Erziehungsverhalten beeinflusst sowohl die Entwicklung eines Kindes als auch die Entstehung und Behandlung psychischer Störungen. Das Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI; Parker, Tupling & Brown, 1979) ist ein bekanntes Instrument zur retrospektiven Erfassung des elterlichen Erziehungsstils. Bisher existiert jedoch keine...
Background
A psychosocial task that can induce comparable levels of stress repeatedly is fundamental to effectively study changes in stress reactivity over time or as a result of an intervention. However, existing tasks have struggled to provide consistent stress responses across repeated trials.
Aim
The goal was to assess the efficacy of two diff...
Psychosocial stress effects of urban living are associated with substantially increased risk for schizophrenia, mood and anxiety disorders, by altering stress-induced activity in the amygdala and pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Genetic factors are likely to modulate the impact of city living on stress processing. Growing evidence suggest...
Empathy, the ability to understand what others are feeling, is critical for social connection and navigating our social world. We investigated the effects of acute stress on cognitive empathy. Given that acute stress, and resulting increased glucocorticoid, triggers a shift in two large-scale brain networks, prioritizing the salience over the execu...
Both, early life adversity (ELA), like being exposed to physical or emotional abuse, or low maternal care, and blood glucose availability have been associated with regulatory alterations in the endocrine stress system: here, individuals with a history of ELA and fasting individuals with low blood glucose levels have been shown to exhibit a blunted...
RationaleStress is associated with increased sensitivity to threat. Previous investigations examining how stress affects threat processing have largely focused on biomarker responses associated with either the sympathetic-nervous-system (SNS) or the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.Objectives
We pharmacologically suppressed activations of...
Health and disease are strongly linked to psychophysiological states. While stress research strongly benefits from standardized stressors, no established protocol focuses on the induction of psychophysiological relaxation. to maintain health, functioning regenerative systems are however likely as important as functioning stress systems. Thus, the i...
This conference abstract is based on the preprint "Early life adversity, dispositional mindfulness, and longitudinal stress experience during the COVID-19 pandemic" which can be found here: https://psyarxiv.com/5kt6z/
The endocrine stress response helps to maintain homeostasis in times of increased demand and supports survival through energy mobilization. Paradoxically, low blood glucose levels impede the endocrine stress response. Increasing blood glucose levels through sugar consumption prior to stress restores the endocrine response, suggesting that glucose a...
Experiencing severe or prolonged stressors in early life is associated with increased risk for mental and physical disorders in adulthood. Further, individuals who experienced early life stress (ELS) may use dysfunctional coping strategies like stress-related eating, in contrast to more beneficial stress buffering mechanisms e.g. based on mindfulne...
Objective
Although evidence shows that stress experiences can predict both hyper- and hypo-cortisol regulation, there is a lack of research examining these associations longitudinally. Our study assessed whether levels and increases in psychological stress experiences predicted 12-year changes in circadian cortisol levels (area under the curve; AUC...
Both abnormal stress and reward responsivity are consistently linked to multiple forms of psychopathology; however, the nature of the associations between stress and reward sensitivity remains poorly understood. In the present study, we examined associations between the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis stress response and event-related potential...
Women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with anxiety and mood disorders. One potential underlying mechanism is sex differences in physiological and psychological responses to stress; however, no studies to date have investigated this proposed mechanism experimentally. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled design, pharmacological challenges...
Background
Repeated exposure to stressors can sensitize the stress system and in turn propel the development of various psychiatric disorders. Stress sensitization can be identified through stress reactivity patterns. Individuals at risk of developing psychosis for example, already show aberrant patterns of daily stress reactivity prior to clinical...
Mimicry, and especially spontaneous facial mimicry, is a rudimentary element of social–emotional experience that is well-conserved across numerous species. Although such mimicry is thought to be a relatively automatic process, research indicates that contextual factors can influence mimicry, especially in humans. Here, we extend this work by invest...
Risk perceptions typically underlie a complex social dynamic: Risk-related information is transmitted between individuals, this information influences risk perceptions, and risk perceptions influence which information is transmitted. This can lead to a social amplification of risk. We test how stress, a widespread affective state, influences the so...
Stress is one of the foremost contributors to the development of psychiatric diseases. Since the prevalence of stress-related complaints is increasing, we are in need for affordable and effective treatment alternatives. Laughter yoga (LY), a popular method encouraging participants to simulate laughter and participate in yogic breathing exercises, i...
Acute stress and chronic stress change the physiology and function of the individual. As one facet, stress and its neuroendocrine correlates – with glucocorticoids in particular – modulate memory in a concerted action. With respect to working memory, impairing effects of acute stress and increased levels of glucocorticoids could be expected, but em...
Cognition is affected by psychophysiological states. While the influence of stress on cognition has been investigated intensively, less studies have addressed how the opposite of stress, a state of relaxation, affects cognition. We investigated whether the extent of parasympathetic activation is positively related to divergent thinking. Sixty healt...
Both abnormal stress and reward responsivity are consistently linked to multiple forms of psychopathology; however, the nature of the associations between stress and reward sensitivity remains poorly understood. The present study examined associations between the HPA axis stress response and event-related potentials sensitive to the receipt of rewa...
While endocrine research strongly benefits from standardized stressors, no established protocol focuses on parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activation. To maintain health, functioning regenerative systems are likely as important as functioning stress systems. Thus, the identification of PNS activating paradigms is needed. Here, we investigated...
Background: Stress-related mental and physical health issues burden modern societies. New treatment opportunities could help to lessen long-term detrimental consequences of stress.
Objective: To investigate whether real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRInf), aimed at modulating brain activity associated with a stressor...
The pituitary gland (PG) is a key component of the essential endocrine systems in humans and animals, including the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal, hypothalamic–pituitary–gonadal, and hypothalamic–pituitary–thyroid axes. Structural changes in the PG are observed in a number of psychiatric disorders. Psychiatric disorders are typically characterized...
Rationale:
Self-esteem is an adaptive personality factor that has been associated with good physical health. While research has observed that self-esteem and physical health typically decline in older adulthood, there is a paucity of research investigating the associations between changes in self-esteem and physical health across the adult lifespa...
Background
Across psychopathologies, trauma-exposed individuals suffer from difficulties in inhibiting emotions and regulating attention. In trauma-exposed individuals without psychopathology, only subtle alterations of neural activity involved in regulating emotions have been reported. It remains unclear how these neural systems react to demanding...
Stress and cannabis use are risk factors for the development of psychosis. We have previously shown that subjects at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) exhibit a higher striatal dopamine response to stress compared with healthy volunteers (HV), with chronic cannabis use blunting this response. However, it is unknown if this abnormal dopamine re...
Objectives
Psychosis is associated with increased subjective and altered endocrine and autonomic nervous system stress-reactivity. Psychosis patients often experience auditory verbal hallucinations, with negative voice content being particularly associated with distress. The present study developed a voice-simulation paradigm and investigated the e...
Disentangling age-related changes from developmental variations in hippocampal volume has proven challenging. This article presents a manual segmentation protocol for the hippocampal-to-ventricle ratio (HVR), a measure combining the assessment of hippocampal volume with surrounding ventricular volume. By providing in a single measure both a standar...
Déjà vu is characterised by feelings of familiarity and concurrent awareness that this familiarity is wrong. Previous neuropsychological research has linked déjà vu during seizures in individuals with unilateral temporal-lobe epilepsy (uTLE) to rhinal-cortex abnormalities, and to recognition-memory deficits that selectively affect familiarity asses...
Background: Stress-related mental and physical health issues burden modern societies. New treatment opportunities could help to lessen long-term detrimental consequences of stress.
Objective: To investigate whether real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRInf), aimed at modulating brain activity associated with a stressor...
This study aimed to examine in healthy older adults the effects of dance/movement training (DMT) on the cortisol awakening response (CAR), a marker of chronic stress. Forty participants (mean age = 67.45, 75% women) were randomized into three groups: DMT (n = 12) – a set of exercises to promote gross motor skills, body awareness, and socialization;...
Background:
Subjective stress is a well-documented predictor of early smoking relapse, yet our understanding of stress and tobacco use is limited by reliance on self-reported measures of stress. We utilized a validated functional neuroimaging paradigm to examine whether stress exposure during early abstinence alters objective measures of brain fun...
Episodic memories can be modified when exposed to new and related information. This phenomenon, known as memory updating, is generally thought to be adaptive but can also lead to incorporating false information into a memory trace. Given the well-known effects of stress on episodic memory, we used a false information paradigm to investigate if acut...
The cortisol awakening response (CAR) is a well-established biomarker for the integrity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in healthy as well as clinical samples. Cortisol rise during the first 60 min after awakening is often used as a proxy of HPA axis regulation in health and disease. Ultradian pulsatility of cortisol is known to su...
Interdependent self-construal (ISC) is a concept positing that people define their self through social roles and relationships with others. We investigated in two independent studies whether ISC had an effect on psychological and endocrine stress responses. Study 1 collected data of 295 healthy young Chinese participants' subjective report of ISC u...
In response to psychological and physiological stressors, metabolic systems of the human body change their activation to increase energy availability, and allow the organism to cope with the real or perceived increase in demand. An inappropriate stress response, perhaps caused by a dysregulation of the metabolic stress response systems, is believed...