Neural correlates of acute psychosocial stress: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of ScanSTRESS studies
Abstract
Acute psychosocial stress engages distributed neural systems involved in salience processing, cognitive control, and self-regulation. Although the ScanSTRESS paradigm provides a standardized approach to inducing psychoscocial stress during functional magnetic resonance imaging, findings across ScanSTRESS studies vary. Building on recent efforts toward greater harmonization, the present study aimed to synthesize the ScanSTRESS literature and identify consistent patterns of neural activation and deactivation. A systematic literature review was conducted (Web of Science, PubMed, citation screening of reviews/meta-analyses). Studies were eligible if they employed the ScanSTRESS/ScanSTRESS-C paradigm in healthy samples, used a within-subjects stress-versus-control contrast, and reported whole-brain coordinates. 13 datasets (N=833 participants) with low risk of bias (Newcastle-Ottawa Scale) were included. Activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses (ALE) were conducted separately for stress-related activations and deactivations. Stress-related activations converged in six clusters, including bilateral insula/claustrum, right middle frontal gyrus, left precentral/inferior frontal gyrus, right thalamus/lentiform nucleus, and left cuneus. Stress-related deactivations converged in ten clusters encompassing the posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, temporo-parietal regions, bilateral insula, and parahippocampal cortex. These findings identify a robust ScanSTRESS pattern, characterized by engagement of salience-related regions alongside widespread suppression of default mode and limbic structures. These results extend previous evidence and provide publicly available ALE maps to facilitate region-of-interest analyses in future ScanSTRESS studies. Although beyond the scope of the present study, future research should examine how neural stress responses relate to demographic variability as well as physiological and endocrine reactivity.
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BibTeX
@misc{pfeifer2026neural,
title = {{Neural correlates of acute psychosocial stress: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of ScanSTRESS studies}},
author = {Lena Sophie Pfeifer and Christian Merz and Erhan Genç and Oliver T. Wolf and Sebastian Ocklenburg},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/g369r_v1},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/g369r_v1/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Neural correlates of acute psychosocial stress: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of ScanSTRESS studies
AU - Lena Sophie Pfeifer
AU - Christian Merz
AU - Erhan Genç
AU - Oliver T. Wolf
AU - Sebastian Ocklenburg
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/g369r_v1
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/g369r_v1/
AB - Acute psychosocial stress engages distributed neural systems involved in salience processing, cognitive control, and self-regulation. Although the ScanSTRESS paradigm provides a standardized approach to inducing psychoscocial stress during functional magnetic resonance imaging, findings across ScanSTRESS studies vary. Building on recent efforts toward greater harmonization, the present study aimed to synthesize the ScanSTRESS literature and identify consistent patterns of neural activation and deactivation. A systematic literature review was conducted (Web of Science, PubMed, citation screening of reviews/meta-analyses). Studies were eligible if they employed the ScanSTRESS/ScanSTRESS-C paradigm in healthy samples, used a within-subjects stress-versus-control contrast, and reported whole-brain coordinates. 13 datasets (N=833 participants) with low risk of bias (Newcastle-Ottawa Scale) were included. Activation likelihood estimation meta-analyses (ALE) were conducted separately for stress-related activations and deactivations. Stress-related activations converged in six clusters, including bilateral insula/claustrum, right middle frontal gyrus, left precentral/inferior frontal gyrus, right thalamus/lentiform nucleus, and left cuneus. Stress-related deactivations converged in ten clusters encompassing the posterior cingulate cortex and precuneus, medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, temporo-parietal regions, bilateral insula, and parahippocampal cortex. These findings identify a robust ScanSTRESS pattern, characterized by engagement of salience-related regions alongside widespread suppression of default mode and limbic structures. These results extend previous evidence and provide publicly available ALE maps to facilitate region-of-interest analyses in future ScanSTRESS studies. Although beyond the scope of the present study, future research should examine how neural stress responses relate to demographic variability as well as physiological and endocrine reactivity.
ER -