infection in people with schizophrenia is related to higher hair glucocorticoid levels.

Introduction: (TG) is a common protozoan parasite infecting approximately one third of the human population. Animal studies have shown that this parasite can manipulate its host behavior. Based on this, human studies have assessed if TG can be involved in mental health disorders associated with important behavioral modifications such as schizophrenia.

Febrile seizure incidence and age at first occurrence are associated with changes in placental normalized gene expression: the '3D' pregnancy cohort study.

Self-reported maternal prenatal stress (MPS) has been associated with earlier febrile seizure (FS) age of onset in offspring. Studies are needed to understand how the biological systems associated with exposure to psychological MPS are linked to seizure disorders in children. The present study aimed to investigate whether placental markers of MPS are linked to FS incidence and age at first occurrence.

Adult Women First Exposed to Early Adversity After 8 Years Old Show Attentional Bias to Threat.

Exposure to early adversity (EA) is associated with long-lasting dysregulations in cognitive processes sustained by brain regions that are sensitive to stress hormones: the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the prefrontal cortex. The Life Cycle Model of Stress highlights the importance of considering the timing at which EA began, as these brain regions follow distinct developmental trajectories. We aimed to test this hypothesis by assessing whether adults exposed to EA exhibit different cognitive patterns as a function of the age at which they were first exposed to EA.

Occupational gender roles in relation to workplace stress, allostatic load, and mental health of psychiatric hospital workers.

Objectives: Gendered inequalities in workplace stress are linked to sex-specific health trajectories that are poorly understood. Measuring gendered inequalities is challenging but necessary to better explain individual differences in occupational health. The aim of this exploratory, retrospective study was to create a measure of occupational gender-roles and use structural equation models to investigate pathways linking layers of gendered factors to workplace stress, allostatic load, and mental health in a sample of psychiatric hospital workers (N = 192).

Early childhood adversity and HPA axis activity in adulthood:The importance of considering minimal age at exposure.

Early adversity (EA) modulates stress hormone secretion in mixed directions. The Accumulation Model suggests that the number of EA predicts patterns of cortisol dysregulations, while the Life Cycle Model of Stress highlights the importance of considering the timing at which EA began, given that brain regions sensitive to stress hormones follow distinct developmental trajectories. We aimed to test these two models in 85 healthy men and women, aged 21-40 years old who reported having been exposed to EA during childhood.

Allostatic load and women's brain health: A systematic review.

Allostatic load represents the 'wear and tear' of chronic stress on the brain and body that may differ between men and women. A small but growing number of studies are assessing allostatic load in relation to mental health. The objective of this systematic review was to (1) assess sex differences in allostatic load and (2) identify allostatic load associations that are specific to women.

Sex Differences in Work-Stress Memory Bias and Stress Hormones.

Mental health problems related to chronic stress in workers appear to be sex-specific. Psychosocial factors related to work-life balance partly explain these sex differences. In addition, physiological markers of stress can provide critical information on the mechanisms explaining how chronic stress gets "under the skull" to increase vulnerability to mental health disorders in working men and women.

Rx risk or resistance? Psychotropic medication use in relation to physiological and psychosocial functioning of psychiatric hospital workers.

To avoid methodological biases, psychoneuroendocrine studies have generally excluded psychotropic medication users. In workplace stress research, this has limited our ability to understand how psychotropic medication use affects many stress-related measures of interest. In this exploratory study, the effects of psychotropic medication use on stress physiology, occupational stress, and mental health were measured in a sample of healthy adult psychiatric hospital workers (N = 203, 70 % women).

A time to be chronically stressed? Maladaptive time perspectives are associated with allostatic load.

Living in the past, the present, or the future can affect stress and health. Our group has shown that acute stress (cortisol reactivity) is modulated by time perspectives, the ways we psychologically relate to time. Here, we expand this research with a comprehensive measure of multi-systemic chronic stress (allostatic load).

Febrile seizures and increased stress sensitivity in children: How it relates to seizure characteristics.

Background: Studies suggest that the relationship between seizures and stress starts early in life. However, evidence of long-term altered stress reactivity following early-life seizures is lacking. Our objectives were to assess alterations in stress hormone reactivity in children with past febrile seizures (FS) and investigate how these alterations relate to clinical characteristics.

The relationship between acute stress and EEG repetition suppression in infants.

Over activation of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in stress situations is known to influence learning and memory. In adults, an inverted-U shape relationship between acute stress, and learning and memory has been demonstrated. Whether this model fits learning performances in infants is unknown.

Blood lead levels and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal function in middle-aged individuals.

Experimental and epidemiological studies suggested that exposure to lead (Pb) may influence the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. However, previous studies have yielded mixed results. We evaluated changes in basal salivary cortisol levels and acute cortisol responsivity to psychological stress in relation with blood Pb levels (BPb), in Caucasian individuals 50-67 years of age.

Early child adversity and psychopathology in adulthood: HPA axis and cognitive dysregulations as potential mechanisms.

Early adversity (EA) has been shown to be a potent risk factor for developing a psychopathology in adulthood. Alterations of the stress system in addition to changes in brain development have been suggested to explain some of the psychopathologies associated with EA. The stress response involves the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis, which leads to the production of glucocorticoids (GCs; cortisol in humans).

Age at first febrile seizure correlates with perinatal maternal emotional symptoms.

Objective: Prenatal exposure to stress and fever are factors lowering seizure threshold in animal models. The fever effect on seizure threshold is well documented in human infants, however the associations between maternal perinatal stress and infants' susceptibility to seizures is unknown. This is the first study in humans to investigate longitudinally, whether in humans, the effect of maternal perinatal emotional symptoms such as stress, anxiety and depression that may trigger a biological stress response on age at first seizure occurrence.

Cross-country discrepancies on public understanding of stress concepts: evidence for stress-management psychoeducational programs.

Background: Negative effects of stress have pose one of the major threats to the health and economic well being of individuals independently of age and cultural background. Nevertheless, the term "stress" has been globally used unlinked from scientificevidence-based meaning. The discrepancies between scientific and public stress knowledge are focus of concern and little is know about it.

Facebook behaviors associated with diurnal cortisol in adolescents: Is befriending stressful?

Facebook(©) is changing the way people interact and socialize. Despite great interest in psychology and sociology, little is known about Facebook behaviors in relation to physiological markers of stress. Given that the brain undergoes important development during adolescence and that glucocorticoids--a major class of stress hormones-are known to modulate its development, it is important to study psychosocial factors that may influence secretion of stress hormones during adolescence.

A time to be stressed? Time perspectives and cortisol dynamics among healthy adults.

Perceptions of past, present, and future events may be related to stress pathophysiology. We assessed whether Time Perspective (TP) is associated with cortisol dynamics among healthy adults (N=61, Ages=18-35, M=22.9, SD=4.

Allostatic load as a tool for monitoring physiological dysregulations and comorbidities in patients with severe mental illnesses.

Severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are disabling, chronic conditions that are often accompanied by medical comorbidities. In this theoretical article, we review the allostatic load model representing the "wear and tear" that chronic stress exacts on the brain and body. We propose an innovative way of monitoring physical and psychiatric comorbidities by integrating the allostatic load model into clinical practice.

Chronic stress, cognitive functioning and mental health.

This review aims to discuss the evidence supporting the link between chronic stress, cognitive function and mental health. Over the years, the associations between these concepts have been investigated in different populations. This review summarizes the findings that have emerged from older populations as well as from populations suffering from pathological aging, namely Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease.

Effects of stress hormones on the brain and cognition: Evidence from normal to pathological aging.

Several studies have demonstrated a wide cognitive variability among aged individuals. One factor thought to be associated with this heterogeneity is exposure to chronic stress throughout life. Animal and human evidence demonstrates that glucocorticoids (GCs), the main class of stress hormones, are strongly linked to memory performance whereby elevated GC levels are associated with memory performance decline in both normal and pathological cognitive aging.

Polymorphism of the 5-HT(2A) receptor gene: association with stress-related indices in healthy middle-aged adults.

Past research has concentrated on the stress system and personality in order to explain the variance found in cognitive performance in old age. A growing body of research is starting to focus on genetic polymorphism as an individual difference factor to explain the observed heterogeneity in cognitive function. While the functional mechanism is still under investigation, polymorphism of the 5-HT(2A) receptor gene (-1438A/G) has been linked to certain behavioral and physiological outcomes, including cortisol secretion, the expression of certain personality traits, and memory performance.

Deactivation of the limbic system during acute psychosocial stress: evidence from positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.

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.

The effects of stress and stress hormones on human cognition: Implications for the field of brain and cognition.

In this review, we report on studies that have assessed the effects of exogenous and endogenous increases in stress hormones on human cognitive performance. We first describe the history of the studies on the effects of using exogenous stress hormones such as glucocorticoids as anti-inflammatory medications on human cognition and mental health. Here, we summarize the cases that led to the diagnosis of glucocorticoid-induced 'steroid psychosis' in human populations and which demonstrated that these stress hormones could thus cross the blood-brain barrier and access the brain where they could influence cognition and mental health.

Hippocampal volume is as variable in young as in older adults: implications for the notion of hippocampal atrophy in humans.

Previous studies in humans have shown the presence of an age-related reduction of hippocampal (HC) volume, as well as the presence of reduced HC volume in psychiatric populations suffering from schizophrenia, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. Altogether, these data suggested that aging or psychiatric disease can have neurotoxic effects on the hippocampus, and lead to HC atrophy. However, these two sets of findings imply that HC volume in young healthy adults should present less variability than HC volume in older adults and psychiatric populations.

Hippocampal volumes are larger in postmenopausal women using estrogen therapy compared to past users, never users and men: a possible window of opportunity effect.

Considerable evidence suggests that estrogen can have neuroprotective effects. However, recent results raised important questions regarding the conditions under which hormone therapy (HT) following menopause can be beneficial. It has been suggested that variables such as time of initiation and duration of HT use are of critical importance for beneficial cognitive effects to be observed.