Mental Stress May Lead To Heart Disease

Most of what is known about the brain and its links to stress and heart disease has been taken from research on animals. This study on humans used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI ), a non-invasive technique for imaging brain activity. While they were inside an MRI scanner, twenty healthy men and women performed a computer task to create mental stress that, consequently, increased their blood pressure. This allowed the researchers to correlate simultaneous changes in blood pressure and brain activity during stress. This study is published in the current issue of Psychophysiology. Media wishing to receive a PDF of the full article please contact journalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net

Psychophysiology reports on new theoretical, empirical and methodological advances in: psychology and psychiatry, cognitive science, cognitive and affective neuroscience, social science, health science and behavioral medicine, and biomedical engineering. It is published on behalf of the Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Lead author Peter Gianaros is an Assistant Professor in the department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. He has published on the physiology of stress in several scientific journals.

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