Stress responses and emotion regulation through distraction in non-clinical students: a near-infrared spectroscopy study
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Background In modern society, individuals encounter various stressors. Even non-clinical individuals experience various stress responses, including depressive or anxiety symptoms, tiredness, and autonomic symptoms. This study aimed to examine the severity of such stress responses and their associations with emotional and attentional changes and prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation during emotional distraction after recalling stressful interpersonal experiences. Methods Sixty-one university students (mean age: 19.26 ± 1.02 years, range: 18–23 years, 25 men) participated in the study, and near-infrared spectroscopy data from 56 participants were analyzed. Participants were stratified into lower, middle, and higher stress-response groups based on four scales of the Public Health Research Foundation Stress Check List Short Form: depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, tiredness/physical responses, and autonomic symptoms. Following an emotion induction task involving the recall of stressful interpersonal experiences, participants completed a Sustained Attention to Response Task as a distraction task. Emotional states were evaluated at baseline, immediately after induction, and after distraction using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. Results Distraction reduced unpleasant emotions in all groups except the higher depressive symptoms group, which exhibited significantly greater negative affect than the middle and lower groups following distraction. In the categorical analysis, this group also showed lower oxyHb changes at ch 15, which approximately corresponds to the left ventrolateral PFC; however, the corresponding association in the continuous-score sensitivity analysis did not persist after false discovery rate (FDR) correction. Higher tiredness/physical responses showed a nominal association with higher commission error rates, but this association did not persist after FDR correction. No significant effects were observed for anxiety symptoms or autonomic symptoms. Conclusion Higher depressive symptoms may be associated with difficulties in regulating unpleasant emotions and altered recruitment of attentional-control or inhibitory processes during distraction, although this functional interpretation remains tentative. Higher tiredness/physical responses may be associated with a tendency toward errors during automatic responding, although this association did not persist after FDR correction and requires further investigation. Overall, these findings highlight the importance of examining multiple dimensions of stress responses, and further research is needed to establish the robustness and functional significance of the observed associations.
Source: Frontiers in Psychology
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,801
OpenAlex ID: W7225616473