Heart rate variability during pregnancy moderates the impact of depressive symptoms on fetal growth.

Depression occurs in up to 13 % of all pregnancies and is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. However, the literature regarding associations between depression and lower birth weight or fetal growth has been inconsistent. Here, we consider if high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) may moderate the association between depression and birth weight.

Maternal blood pressure and birth weight associations in U.S.-born and foreign-born Latinas.

Objectives: Research suggests that acculturating to the United States is detrimental for immigrants' health. Consistent with this pattern, higher levels of U.S.

Prenatal traumatic stress and offspring hair cortisol concentration: A nine year follow up to the Red River flood pregnancy study.

Introduction: Findings concerning the relationship between maternal prenatal and child cortisol concentrations are inconsistent. This study examined whether the influence of an objective traumatic stressor during pregnancy, distance from a natural flood disaster, moderated the association between prenatal maternal diurnal cortisol and 9-year old offspring hair cortisol concentrations.

Methods: Data were collected from 56 of the mothers who took part in a study of flood-related pregnancy outcomes in 2009 and their children.

The influence of stress on attentional bias to threat: An angry face and a noisy crowd.

During stress, attentional capture by threatening stimuli may be particularly adaptive. Individuals are more efficient at identifying threatening faces in a crowd than identifying nonthreatening faces (e.g.

Major flood related strains and pregnancy outcomes.

Objective: To assess the impact of experiencing a major flood during pregnancy on fetal growth and length of gestation, and to consider how flood-related strains might contribute to these effects.

Method: The Red River Pregnancy Project was a prospective study carried out for 3 months immediately after the historic 2009 crest of the Red River in Fargo, North Dakota. Pregnant community residents who were at least 18 years old with a singleton, intrauterine pregnancy participated in the study (N = 169).

Associations Between Sleep and Health-Risk Behaviors in a Rural Adolescent Population.

Introduction: Insufficient sleep has been associated with engagement in a number of health-risk behaviors in adolescents, including substance use and sexual activity. Associations between sleep and health-risk behaviors in adolescents living in rural areas of the United States are not well investigated. In rural settings, adolescents' sleep patterns, lifestyle factors, and health-risk opportunities may differ from those of urban adolescents, making the independent study of sleep and health behavior associations necessary.

Cortisol reactivity in the laboratory predicts ineffectual attentional control in daily life.

Objective: The objective was to examine an executive control difficulty perspective on individual differences in cortisol reactivity using a daily protocol.

Design: Fifty participants competed a laboratory stressor task and individual differences in cortisol reactivity were quantified.

Main Outcome Measures: Daily attentional control, conflicting thoughts, error reactivity, worry and mindfulness were assessed.

Effort and negative affect interact to predict cardiovascular responses to stress.

Objective: Although traditional models posit that negative emotional responses to stress increase cardiovascular reactivity (CVR), laboratory studies have generally not found a strong emotion-CVR association. In this paper, we took a multidimensional approach to examining psychological reactions to stress in three studies.

Methods: In each study we assessed the amount of effort exerted by a participant and the negative affect (NA) felt by the participant with different self-reported measures and an effort behavioural measure.

Lifetime racism and blood pressure changes during pregnancy: implications for fetal growth.

Objective: Research suggests that exposure to racism partially explains why African American women are 2 to 3 times more likely to deliver low birth weight and preterm infants. However, the physiological pathways by which racism exerts these effects are unclear. This study examined how lifetime exposure to racism, in combination with maternal blood pressure changes during pregnancy, was associated with fetal growth.

Regulated and unregulated forms of cortisol reactivity: a dual vulnerability model.

Objective: To test in a laboratory setting the hypothesis that the most problematic daily outcomes should be particular to individuals displaying higher cortisol reactivity and deficits in executive functioning as assessed in a task-switching paradigm.

Methods: Thirty-eight volunteers completed a comprehensive assessment protocol. Individual differences in cortisol reactivity were quantified in an initial laboratory session involving a social stress speech task.

Neuroticism's importance in understanding the daily life correlates of heart rate variability.

Individual differences in high-frequency heart rate variability (HRV) have been conceptualized in terms of a greater capacity to self-regulate problematic outcomes, but have also been conceptualized in terms of greater moment-to-moment flexibility. From a self-regulation perspective, higher HRV should be inversely correlated with trait neuroticism and problematic daily outcomes. From a flexibility perspective, high HRV should result in more state-like functioning--that is, functioning that is more contextual and less trait-like in nature.

Communalism predicts prenatal affect, stress, and physiology better than ethnicity and socioeconomic status.

The authors examined the relevance of communalism, operationalized as a cultural orientation emphasizing interdependence, to maternal prenatal emotional health and physiology and distinguished its effects from those of ethnicity and childhood and adult socioeconomic status (SES). African American and European American women (N = 297) were recruited early in pregnancy and followed through 32 weeks gestation using interviews and medical chart review. Overall, African American women and women of lower socioeconomic backgrounds had higher levels of negative affect, stress, and blood pressure, but these ethnic and socioeconomic disparities were not observed among women higher in communalism.

Blood pressure reactivity predicts somatic reactivity to stress in daily life.

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether stress-somatic symptom associations may be more pronounced among individuals whose bodies exhibit higher levels of cardiovascular reactivity to a laboratory social stress task. During an initial laboratory session, participants delivered a 5-min speech and individual differences in cardiovascular reactivity were quantified. The same participants subsequently completed a 15-day experience sampling protocol, in which daily levels of stress and somatic symptoms were assessed.

Neural bases of moderation of cortisol stress responses by psychosocial resources.

Psychosocial resources have been tied to lower psychological and biological responses to stress. The present research replicated this relationship and extended it by examining how differences in dispositional reactivity of certain neural structures may underlie this relationship. Two hypotheses were examined: (a) psychosocial resources are tied to decreased sensitivity to threat and/or (b) psychosocial resources are associated with enhanced prefrontal inhibition of threat responses during threat regulation.

Neurobiological correlates of coping through emotional approach.

This investigation considered possible health-related neurobiological processes associated with "emotional approach coping" (EAC), or intentional efforts to identify, process, and express emotions surrounding stressors. It was hypothesized that higher dispositional use of EAC strategies would be related to neural activity indicative of greater trait approach motivational orientation and to lower proinflammatory cytokine and cortisol responses to stress. To assess these relationships, 46 healthy participants completed a questionnaire assessing the two components of EAC (i.

Stress and blood pressure during pregnancy: racial differences and associations with birthweight.

Objective: To extend findings that African American women report greater stress during pregnancy, have higher blood pressure (BP), and are twice as likely to have low birthweight infants relative to white women. This study examines a) racial differences in associations between stress and BP during pregnancy, and b) the combined effects of stress and BP on infant birthweight in a sample of 170 African American and white women.

Methods: A prospective, longitudinal study of pregnant women was conducted in which measures of BP, stress, and other relevant variables were collected.

Neural pathways link social support to attenuated neuroendocrine stress responses.

It is well established that a lack of social support constitutes a major risk factor for morbidity and mortality, comparable to risk factors such as smoking, obesity, and high blood pressure. Although it has been hypothesized that social support may benefit health by reducing physiological reactivity to stressors, the mechanisms underlying this process remain unclear. Moreover, to date, no studies have investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms that translate experiences of social support into the health outcomes that follow.

Early family environment, current adversity, the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism, and depressive symptomatology.

Background: Mixed evidence has suggested that homozygous carriers of the short allele (s/s) of the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) may be at increased risk for depression, if they have also been exposed to early or current adversity/stress. We address this debate by examining the relation of a stressful early family environment, recent adversity/stress, and the 5-HTTLPR to depressive symptomatology in a normal sample.

Methods: A nonclinical sample of 118 young adult men and women completed assessments of early family environment, recent stressful events, psychosocial resources, and psychological distress, including depressive symptomatology.

Positive and negative opinion modeling: the influence of another's similarity and dissimilarity.

Modeling research that has focused on the effects of observing similar others appears to have underestimated the influence of observing dissimilar others. Two experiments demonstrated that observing a model express liking for a piece of music induced more favorable opinions of the music (positive modeling) when the model was similar to the participant observer in relevant opinions, and more negative opinions (negative modeling) when the model was dissimilar to the participant in relevant opinions. Of note, this pattern was more pronounced when participants also believed their general backgrounds were dissimilar rather than similar to that of the model.

Audience status moderates the effects of social support and self-efficacy on cardiovascular reactivity during public speaking.

Exaggerated blood pressure responses to stress are implicated in the development of cardiovascular disease, and an effort has been made to identify factors associated with such responses. One situational factor that impacts cardiovascular responses to stress is the presence of other people and their behavior. Here, we manipulated the status of the audience during a stressful public speaking task to explore its impact on reactivity and its possible role in moderating the effects of the speaker's confidence and the audience's response during the speech.