Akan Osman, Bierbrauer Anne, Axmacher Nikolai, Wolf Oliver T
Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Ruhr University Bochum, 44780, Bochum, Germany.
Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 20251, Hamburg, Germany.
Neurobiol Stress. 2023 Jul 29;26:100561. doi: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2023.100561. eCollection 2023 Sep.
Acute stress exerts substantial effects on episodic memory, which are often mediated by glucocorticoids, the end-product of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Surprisingly little is known, however, about the influence of acute stress on human spatial navigation. One specific navigational strategy is path integration, which is linked to the medial entorhinal cortex, a region harboring glucocorticoid receptors and thus susceptible for stress effects. Here, we investigated effects of acute stress on path integration performance using a virtual homing task. We divided a sample of healthy young male participants into a stress group ( = 32) and a control group ( = 34). The stress group underwent the socially evaluated cold-pressor test, while the control group underwent a non-stressful control procedure. Stress induction was confirmed via physiological and subjective markers, including an increase of salivary cortisol concentrations. We applied linear mixed models to investigate the effect of acute stress on path integration depending on task difficulty and the presence or absence of spatial cues. These analyses revealed that stress impaired path integration especially in trials with high difficulty and led to greater decline of performance upon removal of spatial cues. Stress-induced deficits were strongly related to impaired distance estimation, and to a lesser extent to compromised rotation estimation. These behavioral findings are in accordance with the hypothesis that acute stress impairs path integration processes, potentially by affecting the entorhinal grid cell system. More generally, the current data suggests acute stress to impair cognitive functions mediated by medial temporal lobe regions outside the hippocampus.
急性应激对情景记忆有重大影响，这种影响通常由下丘脑 - 垂体 - 肾上腺轴的终产物糖皮质激素介导。然而，令人惊讶的是，关于急性应激对人类空间导航的影响却知之甚少。一种特定的导航策略是路径整合，它与内侧内嗅皮质有关，该区域含有糖皮质激素受体，因此易受应激影响。在这里，我们使用虚拟归巢任务研究了急性应激对路径整合表现的影响。我们将一组健康的年轻男性参与者分为应激组（n = 32）和对照组（n = 34）。应激组接受社会评估冷加压试验，而对照组接受无应激的对照程序。通过生理和主观指标确认应激诱导，包括唾液皮质醇浓度的增加。我们应用线性混合模型来研究急性应激对路径整合的影响，该影响取决于任务难度以及空间线索的有无。这些分析表明，应激会损害路径整合，尤其是在高难度试验中，并且在去除空间线索后导致表现下降得更厉害。应激诱导的缺陷与距离估计受损密切相关，在较小程度上与旋转估计受损有关。这些行为学发现与以下假设一致，即急性应激可能通过影响内嗅网格细胞系统来损害路径整合过程。更一般地说，当前数据表明急性应激会损害由海马体外的内侧颞叶区域介导的认知功能。
