Work

PS171. Dissociable Effects of Social Stress on Exploratory and Exploitative Reasoning Across Age

Year: 2016

Type: conference-abstract

Abstract: Background: Neuropsychiatric disorders like depression often have onset in late adolescence or early adulthood - periods associated with increased prefrontal-striatal reactivity to stress. Exploratory reasoning may be sensitive to social competition stress prevalent in urban societies. Here, we examined exploratory and exploitative reasoning in a novel functional MRI paradigm. We hypothesized that induced social competitive stress might differentially affect prefrontal-striatal function across dissociable reasoning processes in younger relative to middle-aged individuals. Methods: We studied 21 young adults (median age 23) and 21 middle-aged adults (median age 49) as they were scanned in a 3T-MRI. The fMRI paradigm engaged events where subjects explored whether a hidden number was higher or lower than a presented number, or exploited knowledge of the hidden number. Trials were performed with or without induced social-competitive stress featuring a competitor doing better at the same task. Results: Age group did not affect reasoning performance metrics. Social stress was, however, associated with faster and more risky exploratory responses (p<0.01). Prefrontal-striatal function was decreased by social stress during exploratory reasoning (p<0.001 uncorrected). These effects were relatively larger in younger subjects (p<0.001 uncorrected). On the other hand, older subjects' prefrontal-striatal function reacted to stress more during exploitation tasks (p<0.001 uncorrected). Conclusions: Young and older adults appear to react differently under stress during exploration versus exploitation of knowledge. Our results suggest transiting from early to middle adulthood may differentially modulate stress-associated prefrontal-striatal response biases in the processing of exploratory versus exploitative reasoning.

Source: The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology

DOI: 10.1093/ijnp/pyw043.171

Authors: Dilip Kumar, Amelia Koh, V Chua, YY Sitoh, Hao Yang TAN

Language: English

Topic: Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,693

Funders: Universität Wien, Medizinische Universität Wien