University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2023 Jul;8(7):703-711. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2022.12.004. Epub 2022 Dec 17.
Stress is a major risk factor for depression, and both are associated with important changes in decision-making patterns. However, decades of research have only weakly connected physiological measurements of stress to the subjective experience of depression. Here, we examined the relationship between prolonged physiological stress, mood, and explore-exploit decision making in a population navigating a dynamic environment under stress: health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We measured hair cortisol levels in health care workers who completed symptom surveys and performed an explore-exploit restless-bandit decision-making task; 32 participants were included in the final analysis. Hidden Markov and reinforcement learning models assessed task behavior.
Participants with higher hair cortisol exhibited less exploration (r = -0.36, p = .046). Higher cortisol levels predicted less learning during exploration (β = -0.42, false discovery rate [FDR]-corrected p [p] = .022). Importantly, mood did not independently correlate with cortisol concentration, but rather explained additional variance (β = 0.46, p = .022) and strengthened the relationship between higher cortisol and lower levels of exploratory learning (β = -0.47, p = .022) in a joint model. These results were corroborated by a reinforcement learning model, which revealed less learning with higher hair cortisol and low mood (β = -0.67, p = .002).
These results imply that prolonged physiological stress may limit learning from new information and lead to cognitive rigidity, potentially contributing to burnout. Decision-making measures link subjective mood states to measured physiological stress, suggesting that they should be incorporated into future biomarker studies of mood and stress conditions.
压力是抑郁的一个主要风险因素，两者都与决策模式的重要变化有关。然而，几十年来的研究仅将生理压力的测量值与抑郁的主观体验微弱地联系起来。在这里，我们研究了在面临压力的人群中，即 COVID-19 大流行期间的医护人员中，长期生理压力、情绪与探索-利用决策之间的关系。
我们测量了完成症状调查并执行探索-利用不安分带决策任务的医护人员的头发皮质醇水平；最终有 32 名参与者纳入了最终分析。隐马尔可夫模型和强化学习模型评估了任务行为。
头发皮质醇水平较高的参与者表现出较少的探索（r=-0.36，p=0.046）。较高的皮质醇水平预示着在探索期间的学习较少（β=-0.42，经错误发现率（FDR）校正的 p（p）=0.022）。重要的是，情绪与皮质醇浓度没有独立相关，而是解释了额外的方差（β=0.46，p=0.022），并在联合模型中增强了较高皮质醇与较低探索性学习水平之间的关系（β=-0.47，p=0.022）。强化学习模型的结果证实了这一点，该模型显示，较高的头发皮质醇和较低的情绪会导致学习减少（β=-0.67，p=0.002）。
这些结果表明，长期的生理压力可能会限制从新信息中学习，并导致认知僵化，这可能导致倦怠。决策测量将主观情绪状态与测量的生理压力联系起来，这表明它们应该被纳入未来的情绪和压力状况的生物标志物研究中。
