Neural mechanisms of self-affirmation's stress buffering effects

Janine M Dutcher; Naomi I Eisenberger; Hayoung Woo; William M P Klein; Peter R Harris; John M Levine; John David Creswell

doi:10.1093/scan/nsaa042

Neural mechanisms of self-affirmation's stress buffering effects

Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2020 Nov 10;15(10):1086-1096. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa042.

Authors

Janine M Dutcher¹, Naomi I Eisenberger², Hayoung Woo³, William M P Klein⁴, Peter R Harris⁵, John M Levine⁶, John David Creswell¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
² Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
³ Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.
⁴ Behavioral Research Program, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, MD 20852, USA.
⁵ School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK.
⁶ Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.

Abstract

Self-affirmation can buffer stress responses across different contexts, yet the neural mechanisms for these effects are unknown. Self-affirmation has been shown to increase activity in reward-related neural regions, including the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). Given that reward-related prefrontal cortical regions such as the VMPFC are involved in reducing neurobiological and behavioral responses to stress, we hypothesized that self-affirmation would activate VMPFC and also reduce neural responses to stress in key neural threat system regions such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI). We explored this hypothesis using self-affirmation and evaluative stress tasks following a within-subjects design in the fMRI scanner. Consistent with prior work, self-affirmation blocks led to lower self-reported stress and improved performance. With respect to neural activity, compared to control blocks, self-affirmation blocks led to greater VMPFC activity, and subsequently less left AI (but not dACC) activity during stress task blocks. Functional connectivity analyses revealed greater connectivity between the VMPFC and left and right AI during self-affirmation compared to control. These findings begin to articulate the neural circuits involved in self-affirmation's effects during exposure to stressors, and more broadly specify neural reward-based responses to stressful situations.

Keywords: health neuroscience; interventions; self-affirmation; stress.

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Female
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods
Male
Prefrontal Cortex / diagnostic imaging*
Reward*
Stress, Psychological / psychology*
Ventral Striatum / diagnostic imaging*
Young Adult