Stronger brain responses to acute stress reflect greater everyday stress variability
- 1Section of Medical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
Abstract
Laboratory stress tasks are widely used to assess individual differences in acute stress reactivity, yet it remains unclear how these responses correspond to stress experienced in everyday life. Here, we combined the Montreal imaging stress task (MIST) with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) over three months to assess acute and everyday stress in 67 healthy women. Greater within-person variability in everyday stress, but not average stress levels, were associated with stronger overall stress-related brain responses (b = 0.73, p = .039), with a whole-brain association particularly evident in the bilateral caudate (rROI = .32, pcluster.FWE < .001). Greater everyday stress variability was also associated with stronger stress-related functional connectivity between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and parietal and posterior medial regions (pcluster.FWE < .001). We conclude that acute neural stress responses relate more closely to fluctuations in perceived stress than to how stressed an individual feels on average. This suggests that laboratory stress tasks capture acute stress responsivity that is distinct from average stress exposure, highlighting the importance of considering what these tasks measure when interpreting individual differences in acute stress responses.
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BibTeX
@misc{kordel2026stronger,
title = {{Stronger brain responses to acute stress reflect greater everyday stress variability}},
author = {M. Kördel and A. Kühnel and A.-C. S. Kimmig and S. Beinbauer and L. Kogler and I. Sundström-Poromaa and M. Henes and N. B. Kroemer},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.64898/2026.08.26.747278},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.26.747278v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Stronger brain responses to acute stress reflect greater everyday stress variability
AU - M. Kördel
AU - A. Kühnel
AU - A.-C. S. Kimmig
AU - S. Beinbauer
AU - L. Kogler
AU - I. Sundström-Poromaa
AU - M. Henes
AU - N. B. Kroemer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/26
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.08.26.747278
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.26.747278v1
AB - Laboratory stress tasks are widely used to assess individual differences in acute stress reactivity, yet it remains unclear how these responses correspond to stress experienced in everyday life. Here, we combined the Montreal imaging stress task (MIST) with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) over three months to assess acute and everyday stress in 67 healthy women. Greater within-person variability in everyday stress, but not average stress levels, were associated with stronger overall stress-related brain responses (b = 0.73, p = .039), with a whole-brain association particularly evident in the bilateral caudate (rROI = .32, pcluster.FWE < .001). Greater everyday stress variability was also associated with stronger stress-related functional connectivity between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and parietal and posterior medial regions (pcluster.FWE < .001). We conclude that acute neural stress responses relate more closely to fluctuations in perceived stress than to how stressed an individual feels on average. This suggests that laboratory stress tasks capture acute stress responsivity that is distinct from average stress exposure, highlighting the importance of considering what these tasks measure when interpreting individual differences in acute stress responses.
ER -