急性应激损害对威胁刺激的注意解除

Threat stimuli catch our attention when compare to neutral stimuli, named attentional bias which including facilitated attentional engagement and difficult attentional disengagement to threat. As all we know, acute stress influenced our attention to threat. However, we dont know whether facilitated attention engagement toward threat will enhanced or attentional disengagement toward threat will impaired under acute stress. To this end, the present study investigated whether the attentional engagement to threat would enhanced when people were stressed. Thirty-six healthy male adults were randomly assigned to stress group (n = 18) and control group (n = 18), the stress group underwent social evaluation cold pressor test (SECPT) while the control group underwent control protocol. The dot probe task was used to measure the attentional bias towards threat. The state anxiety questionnaire and saliva were acquired at five time-point including 85 and 70 minutes before the SECPT, immediately before and after the dot probe task, 70 minutes after the SECPT. We found that the SECPT successfully induced stress response, subjects in the stress group showed stronger sate anxiety and stronger HPA axis response indicated by increased salivary cortisol concentration after the SECPT comparing control group, whereas no significant difference were found before SECPT. On behavioral level, we found the attentional disengagement in stress group was slower than control group. On the ERP, we found bigger amplitude of SPCN (300~600ms after cue) in the stress group compare to the control group. These results were indicated that the attentional disengagement toward threat is impaired under acute stress situation. "