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Mental health issues, particularly stress-related mental problems and disease, are on the rise. In Europe alone, 60 million people suffer from anxiety disorders, while major depression affects an estimated 30 million people.
Advancements in preventative care have been slow, largely due to a lack of understanding about the factors that determine an individual’s resilience to the stressors behind many mental health issues.
“Our research has made a major contribution to filling this gap, by detailing the effects stress has on brain function,” explains Erno Hermans, principal investigator at the Donders Institute’s Cognitive Affective Neuroscience Lab and project coordinator of the STRESNET project, which was funded by the European Research Council.
Wearable devices for real-life stress monitoring
The project developed a system for real-life stress monitoring using smartphones and wearable biosensors. The groundbreaking system prompts participants to complete short surveys throughout the day. Using this data, researchers can see the effect stressful experiences have on the individual’s nervous system and thereby identify those who are more resilient to real-life stressors.
Combining this system with brain imaging also allowed researchers to successfully identify the specific brain networks associated with resilience to real-life stressors.
“These findings highlight the potential of wearable biosensors in stress-related mental-health monitoring,” he says. “They also show that physiological changes do not occur only during stress, meaning the psychological context is critical for interpreting the signals from wearable biosensors.”
Researchers are currently exploring ways to develop the technology into a marketable solution.
Training the brain against stress
Another key outcome of the project was the use of real-time functional MRI (fMRI) neurofeedback technology to train the brain to better allocate resources under stress.
Using real-time visual feedback, researchers successfully trained healthy participants to bidirectionally control the balance between the salience network (the part of the brain that evaluates and responds to unexpected stimuli) and the executive control network (the part that oversees problem-solving and decision-making).
Researchers also demonstrated that this newly learned skill can be transferred to a stressful situation where feedback is no longer given.
“We believe that this training provides the foundation for potential clinical or preventative interventions aimed at increasing an individual’s resilience to stress,” notes Hermans.
A number of breakthrough findings
In addition to successes in wearable devices and brain training, researchers also showed that individuals vulnerable to developing stress-related disorders (for example, siblings of patients exhibiting schizophrenia) typically have a blunted response to stressors – a potential new biomarker for stress sensitivity.
Furthermore, using an experimental model for eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing, researchers showed how eye movements can deactivate the part of the brain involved with experiencing of emotions. Hermans says the finding could open the door to therapies that reduce the impact of stress-related memories.
Paving the way towards mental health prevention
A core tenet of the project was to show that acute stress induces a shift in the physical activity of the brain. Recognising these changes can help researchers study the impact of stress in the laboratory and in daily life.
STRESNET researchers were also able to show how these changes can predict emotional responsiveness to stress in real life, as well as how the response is altered in individuals predisposed to developing stress-related mental disorders.
“Together, these efforts provide a scientific foundation for future efforts toward mental health prevention in individuals at risk of developing stress-related diseases,” concludes Hermans.