title: Heightened functional neural activation to psychological stress covaries with exaggerated blood pressure reactivity.
abstract: Individuals who show exaggerated blood pressure reactions to psychological stressors are at increased risk for hypertension, atherosclerosis, and stroke. We tested whether individuals who show exaggerated stressor-induced blood pressure reactivity also show heightened stressor-induced neural activation in brain areas involved in controlling the cardiovascular system. In a functional MRI study, 46 postmenopausal women (mean age: 68.04; SD: 1.35 years) performed a standardized Stroop color-word interference task that served as a stressor to increase blood pressure. Across individuals, a larger task-induced rise in blood pressure covaried with heightened and correlated patterns of activation in brain areas implicated previously in stress-related cardiovascular control: the perigenual and posterior cingulate cortex, bilateral prefrontal cortex, anterior insula, and cerebellum. Entered as a set in hierarchical regression analyses, activation values in these brain areas uniquely predicted the magnitude of task-induced changes in systolic (DeltaR(2)=0.54; P<0.001) and diastolic (DeltaR(2)=0.27; P<0.05) blood pressure after statistical control for task accuracy and subjective reports of task stress. Heightened stressor-induced activation of cingulate, prefrontal, insular, and cerebellar brain areas may represent a functional neural phenotype that characterizes individuals who are prone to show exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. gianarospj@upmc.edu
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Gianaros
authors.forename: J Richard
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Jennings
authors.forename: Lei K
authors.initials: LK
authors.lastname: Sheu
authors.forename: Stuart W G
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Derbyshire
authors.forename: Karen A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Matthews
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001794:Blood Pressure; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003971:Diastole; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D017698:Postmenopause; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000469:parasitology / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013599:Systole