Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Stress Cognition: Becoming immersed in stress and disengaging from it with mindful attention Pubblico

Lebois, Lauren Ann McDonough (2014)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/x633f114v?locale=it
Published

Abstract

Because chronic stress is linked to decreased well-being, establishing the processes that both produce and disable stress is important. We focus on how people attribute stressfulness to events, the subjective realism of stressful cognition, and one means of blocking subjective realism, mindful attention. In article 1, we present a Grounded Theory of Stress Cognition, explaining how people attribute stressfulness to events. According to this theory, when people experience stress, they store situated conceptualizations in memory that typically include features related to expectancy violation, threat, efficacy, peripheral physiology, emotion, rumination, coping, and metacognition. Later, new events are categorized as stressful when they are similar to situated conceptualizations established for prior stressful events. To assess this theory, participants evaluated features of stressful and non-stressful situations. In a multilevel regression model, situational features explained 85% of the variance in perceived stressfulness, supporting our hypothesis that people use situated conceptualizations of previous experiences to categorize current stressful events. When an event is perceived as stressful, it often seems real, as if they were happening in the moment. One possibility is that this subjective realism results from simulating the self engaged in a situation (immersion). If so, then disengaging the self--decentering--should reduce the subjective realism associated with immersion, and therefore stressfulness. In a brief intervention outlined in article 2, we taught participants a strategy for disengaging from events, simply viewing their thoughts as fleeting mental states (mindful attention). Neural activity was measured as participants subsequently imagined stressful and non-stressful events during mindful attention vs. immersion. Mindful attention showed greater activity in brain areas associated with perspective shifting and effortful attention, whereas immersion showed greater activity in areas associated with self-processing and visceral states. These results suggest that, through shifts of perspective, mindful attention produces decentering by rapidly disengaging embodied senses of self from stressful situations so that affect doesn't develop. Together findings from both articles provide a more nuanced understanding of mechanisms that contribute to reenacting stressful events, how participants categorize events as stressful, why stressful thoughts feel so real, and why mindfulness has a therapeutic effect.

Table of Contents

General Introduction ........................................................................................................................................1

Preface: Addressing Unresolved Issues................................................................................................................2
Stress: Overview Cognitive, Neural, and Physiological Mechanisms...........................................................................4
Overview of grounded cognition and Conceptual Act Theory ....................................................................................5
Neural correlates of stressful cognition ................................................................................................................6
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis regulation ......................................................................................................7
HPA axis .........................................................................................................................................................9
Subjective realism of stressful thoughts ..............................................................................................................12
Blocking the Subjective Realism of Thoughts ........................................................................................................12

Brief Mindfulness Interventions ..........................................................................................................................15
Mindful attention .............................................................................................................................................17
Overview........................................................................................................................................................18
Article format .................................................................................................................................................20

Article 1: A Grounded Theory of Stress Cognition ..................................................................................................21

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................22
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................23

Building on Appraisal Theories ...........................................................................................................................24

Grounded Cognition .........................................................................................................................................25

Situated conceptualization .................................................................................................................................26

Pattern completion inferences ............................................................................................................................27

Simulation ......................................................................................................................................................29

A Grounded Theory of Stress Cognition ................................................................................................................30

Stress cognition results from general cognitive mechanisms ....................................................................................32

Characterizing the general category of stressful experiences and its associated features ..............................................33
Study Overview ...............................................................................................................................................37

Methods .........................................................................................................................................................39
Participants ....................................................................................................................................................39

Study Design ..................................................................................................................................................39

Materials .......................................................................................................................................................40

Life Events .....................................................................................................................................................40

Procedure ......................................................................................................................................................41
Statistical Method ............................................................................................................................................42

Results ..........................................................................................................................................................44

Correlation Analysis .........................................................................................................................................44

Data Reduction through Factor Analysis ...............................................................................................................48

Predicting Perceived Stressfulness with Multilevel Regression Models .......................................................................49

Model 1 .........................................................................................................................................................49
Model 2 .........................................................................................................................................................50

Model 3 .........................................................................................................................................................50
Further analysis of the Core Features factor .........................................................................................................51
Further analysis of individual differences .............................................................................................................52

Discussion ......................................................................................................................................................53
Why is the Perception of Stress Important? ..........................................................................................................56
Stress Cognition Originates in General Cognitive Mechanisms ..................................................................................57
Relations Between Stress Cognition, Neural Activity, and Peripheral Physiology ..........................................................59
Further Exploring Individual Differences in Cognition ..............................................................................................59
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................61
References .....................................................................................................................................................62
Author Contributions .........................................................................................................................................73

Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................................73

Declaration of Conflicting Interests .....................................................................................................................73

Funding .........................................................................................................................................................73

Footnotes .......................................................................................................................................................74

Tables ...........................................................................................................................................................75

Table 1 ..........................................................................................................................................................75

Table 2 ..........................................................................................................................................................78

Table 3 ..........................................................................................................................................................79

Figures ..........................................................................................................................................................80

Figure 1 .........................................................................................................................................................80

Supplemental Materials .....................................................................................................................................81

Article 2: Decentering the self during mindful attention to imagined stressful events ..................................................120

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................121

Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................122

Subjective Realism ..........................................................................................................................................122

Mindfulness ....................................................................................................................................................122

Extended practice vs. brief interventions .............................................................................................................123

Experiment Overview ......................................................................................................................................125

Method .........................................................................................................................................................125

Design and Participants ...................................................................................................................................125

Design .........................................................................................................................................................126

Participants ...................................................................................................................................................127

Materials ......................................................................................................................................................127

Scenarios .....................................................................................................................................................127

Procedure .....................................................................................................................................................129

Training Session 1 ..........................................................................................................................................129

Training Session 2 ..........................................................................................................................................132

Scanning Session ...........................................................................................................................................132
Post scan session ...........................................................................................................................................133

Scan Sequence ..............................................................................................................................................133

Image Preprocessing and Statistical Analyses ......................................................................................................134

Conjunction analyses .......................................................................................................................................135

Contrast analyses ...........................................................................................................................................136

Results .........................................................................................................................................................136

Behavior Results ............................................................................................................................................136

Shared Activations in the Conjunction Analyses ....................................................................................................137

Reading Period ...............................................................................................................................................137

Strategy Period ..............................................................................................................................................138

Unique Activations in the Conjunction Analyses ....................................................................................................139

Stressful Events .............................................................................................................................................139

Nonstressful Events ........................................................................................................................................140

Network Analysis of the Unique Activations ........................................................................................................141

Stressful Events .............................................................................................................................................141

Nonstressful Events ........................................................................................................................................142

Critical comparisons between conditions ............................................................................................................143

Linear Contrast Analyses .................................................................................................................................144

Reading Period ..............................................................................................................................................144

Strategy Period .............................................................................................................................................146

Discussion ....................................................................................................................................................147

Relations to Previous Neuroimaging Findings ......................................................................................................148

Implications for Extended Practice and Intervention .............................................................................................150

References ...................................................................................................................................................152

Author Contributions ......................................................................................................................................163

Acknowledgments ..........................................................................................................................................163

Declaration of Conflicting Interests ...................................................................................................................163

Funding ........................................................................................................................................................164

Tables .........................................................................................................................................................165

Table 1 .........................................................................................................................................................165

Table 2 .........................................................................................................................................................172

Table 3 .........................................................................................................................................................179
Figures .........................................................................................................................................................180

Figure 1 ........................................................................................................................................................180

Figure 2 ........................................................................................................................................................181

Figure 3 ........................................................................................................................................................182

Figure 4 ........................................................................................................................................................183

Figure 5 ........................................................................................................................................................184

Supplemental Materials ...................................................................................................................................186

General Discussion .........................................................................................................................................207

Clarification of Additional Results ......................................................................................................................208
Integrating Results Across Articles.....................................................................................................................210
Self and Stress ..............................................................................................................................................212
Social Self-Preservation Theory ........................................................................................................................212
Limitations ....................................................................................................................................................213

Future Directions and Conclusions .....................................................................................................................215

References.....................................................................................................................................................219

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