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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

SO424

Traces of acute and chronic stress in the resting brain

SIGNATURES OF ACUTE AND CHRONIC STRESS IN THE RESTING BRAIN

Acute immune and cortisol responses to stress, along with chronic perceived stress, are reflected in resting-state brain connectivity.

The study aims to investigate whether immune measures associated with acute and chronic stress are reflected in resting-state brain connectivity in humans. The background notes that leukocyte counts are elevated in patients with depression, inflammatory markers are increased in post-traumatic stress disorder, and animal studies show that different brain regions regulate lymphocyte and neutrophil trafficking following stress. In the methods, 260 twins aged 18 to 59 years (mean age 37; 191 women) completed the Trier Social Stress Test; blood samples were collected at baseline and immediately after stress exposure, resting-state fMRI data were acquired at a separate time point, and chronic stress was measured using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Stress-induced changes in cortisol, lymphocytes, and neutrophils (stress minus baseline), along with PSS scores, were entered into a Network-Based Statistics analysis of whole-brain functional connectivity comprising 400 cortical and 29 subcortical nodes. Significance was tested using 5,000 permutations accounting for family structure, and significant edges were mapped onto seven established resting-state networks. The results identified significant clusters (p < 0.05) for PSS scores and stress-induced changes in neutrophils and cortisol; figures were presented at a threshold of r = 0.21, and the results were robust to sensitivity analyses of this threshold. No significant findings were observed for lymphocytes at any threshold, while associations with perceived stress were observed across a broader range of statistical thresholds, suggesting a more robust and widespread effect than that of acute stress markers; all analyses controlled for sex and age. The findings show that stress-related immune processes map onto the resting human brain and suggest a potential neurobiological pathway linking stress, immune dysregulation, and vulnerability to psychiatric disorders.

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