Publications by authors named "Robert Renwick"
Background: Stress-induced metabolic changes can have detrimental health effects. Newly developed paradigms to investigate stress in neuroimaging environments allow the assessment of brain activation changes in association with the perception of and the metabolic response to stress.
Methods: We exposed human subjects to a psychosocial stressor in one positron emission tomography (n = 10) and one functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; n = 40) experiment.
Objective: We developed a protocol for inducing moderate psychologic stress in a functional imaging setting and evaluated the effects of stress on physiology and brain activation.
Methods: The Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST), derived from the Trier Mental Challenge Test, consists of a series of computerized mental arithmetic challenges, along with social evaluative threat components that are built into the program or presented by the investigator. To allow the effects of stress and mental arithmetic to be investigated separately, the MIST has 3 test conditions (rest, control and experimental), which can be presented in either a block or an event-related design, for use with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or positron emission tomography (PET).
Self-esteem, the value we place on ourselves, has been associated with effects on health, life expectancy, and life satisfaction. Correlated with self-esteem is internal locus of control, the individual's perception of being in control of his or her outcomes. Recently, variations in self-esteem and internal locus of control have been shown to predict the neuroendocrine cortisol response to stress.
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