Trial reportThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2012
Simultaneous glucocorticoid and noradrenergic activity disrupts the neural basis of goal-directed action in the human brain.
Trial report in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 73 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
73 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 162 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effects of acute stress on core executive functions: A meta-analysis and comparison with cortisol.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2016Pooled it
- Risky decision-making in the balloon analogue risk task - the role of noradrenaline and cortisol.Psychopharmacology · 2026Trial
- Acute stress leaves fear generalization in healthy individuals intact.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2021Trial
- (Lack of) Effects of noradrenergic stimulation on human working memory performance.Psychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Causal role of the inferolateral prefrontal cortex in balancing goal-directed and habitual control of behavior.Scientific reports · 2018Trial
- Combined Effects of Glucocorticoid and Noradrenergic Activity on Loss Aversion.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2018Trial
- Neural Bases of Affect-Based Impulsivity: A Decision Neuroscience Account.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Review
- Memory Boost for Recurring Emotional Events Is Driven by Initial Amygdala Response Promoting Stable Neocortical Patterns across Repetitions.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Stress and Inflammation Target Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Function: Neural Mechanisms Underlying Weakened Cognitive Control.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- Habitual behavioural control moderates the relation between daily perceived stress and purging.European eating disorders review : the journal of the Eating Disorders Association · 2025Article
- Basal cortisol level modulates stress-induced opioid-seeking behavior.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Article
- Effects of acute stress on reward processing: A comprehensive meta-analysis of rodent and human studies.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Review
- Acute stress facilitates habitual behavior in female rats.Physiology & behavior · 2024Article
- Decision Making Within and Outside Standard Operating Procedures: Paradoxical Use of Operational Discretion in Firefighters.Human factors · 2023Article
- Influence of Stress and Emotions in the Learning Process: The Example of COVID-19 on University Students: A Narrative Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Computational Mechanisms of Addiction and Anxiety: A Developmental Perspective.Biological psychiatry · 2023Review
- Overnight Corticosterone and Gene Expression in Mouse Hippocampus: Time Course during Resting Period.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Stress disrupts insight-driven mnemonic reconfiguration in the medial temporal lobe.NeuroImage · 2023Article
- Pharmacological activation of the amygdala, but not single prolonged footshock-induced acute stress, interferes with cue-induced motivation toward food rewards in rats.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Effects of neuromodulation on cognitive and emotional responses to psychosocial stressors in healthy humans.Neurobiology of stress · 2023Review
13 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Stress promotes a shift from goal-directed action-outcome learning toward habitual stimulus-response learning. This shift is mediated by an interaction of noradrenergic activity and glucocorticoid stress hormones. In the present experiment, we examined the neural correlates of the stress (hormone)-induced shift from goal-directed to habit learning in the human brain. Healthy participants were administered hydrocortisone, the α2-adrenoceptor antagonist yohimbine, or both before they were trained in two instrumental actions leading to two distinct food rewards. After training, one of the rewards was devalued by feeding participants to satiety on that food. Finally, participants were presented the two instrumental actions in extinction. We collected functional magnetic resonance images both during instrumental training and during extinction testing. Our behavioral data confirmed that the simultaneous administration of hydrocortisone and yohimbine renders instrumental behavior insensitive to the outcome devaluation (and thus habitual), whereas hydrocortisone or yohimbine alone have no such effect. At the neural level, the combined administration of hydrocortisone and yohimbine reduced the sensitivity of the orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortex to changes in outcome value. Brain areas that have been previously implicated in habit learning were not modulated by hydrocortisone and yohimbine. These findings suggest that concurrent glucocorticoid and noradrenergic activity disrupts the neural bases of goal-directed action and thus renders behavior habitual.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.