The relevance of chronic stress for the acute stress reaction in people at elevated risk for psychosis.

Background: Theoretical models and empirical evidence suggest that alterations of the acute stress reaction are a vulnerability indicator of psychosis. However, more studies are needed that use laboratory stressors and a multimodal assessment of the stress reaction. Furthermore, it needs to be clarified whether alterations of the acute stress reaction result from the chronic stress level.

Hair cortisol concentrations as an indicator of potential HPA axis hyperactivation in risk for psychosis.

A chronic hyperactivation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is assumed to be an important indicator of vulnerability for psychosis. Despite the considerable research on this topic, putative social origins of HPA axis hyperactivation have received little attention in the literature so far. Also, the inconsistency of previous findings calls for new and reliable methods in the assessment of HPA axis activation.

Neural mechanisms of perceptual decision-making and their link to neuropsychiatric symptoms in multiple sclerosis.

Background: Decision-making (DM) capabilities are impaired in multiple sclerosis (MS). A variety of researchers hypothesized that this impairment is associated with reduced quality of life (QoL) and neuropsychiatric symptoms. Studies explicitly testing this hypothesis, however, are rare, provided inconclusive results, or evaluated only a limited selection of DM domains.

Stress levels in psychosis: Do body and mind diverge?

Discrepancies between subjective and physiological stress levels may help to explain why stress leads to psychosis. We examined self-reported and physiological stress levels (heart rate, skin conductance level, cortisol level) during two conditions (noise stressor, no stressor) in patients with psychotic disorders (n = 35), patients with depression (n = 30), and healthy controls (n = 28), expecting larger discrepancies between self-reported and physiological stress levels in patients with psychosis than in controls. Difference values were calculated from standardized stress levels.

Brain activity, regional gray matter loss, and decision-making in multiple sclerosis.

Background: Decision-making (DM) abilities deteriorate with multiple sclerosis (MS) disease progression which impairs everyday life and is thus clinically important.

Objective: To investigate the underlying neurocognitive processes and their relation to regional gray matter (GM) loss induced by MS.

Methods: We used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Iowa Gambling Task to measure DM-related brain activity in 36 MS patients and 21 healthy controls (HC).