ArticleFrontiers in psychology2018
Acute Stress Attenuates Cognitive Flexibility in Males Only: An fNIRS Examination.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 56 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acute Stress Impacts Executive-Social Function: Evidence From Prefrontal Activation and fNIRS-Based Hyperscanning.Brain and behavior · 2026Trial
- Hemodynamic responses of the prefrontal cortex following cold water immersion during an eyes-closed balance assessment.European journal of applied physiology · 2026Article
- Acute Stress Facilitates Cognitive Control in Healthy Men: an fNIRS Study.Brain topography · 2025Article
- Extracranial Hemodynamic Responses to a Noxious Cold Pressor Task Differ Between Persistent Post-Traumatic Headache and Healthy Controls.Journal of personalized medicine · 2025Article
- How to Improve Cognitive Flexibility: Evidence From Noninvasive Neuromodulation Techniques.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2025Review
- Effects of chronic stress on cognitive function - From neurobiology to intervention.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Review
- Article
- The Influence of Classroom Size and Window View on Young Children's Executive Functions and Physiological Responses, Based on VR Technology.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Cognitive flexibility assessment with a new Reversal learning task paradigm compared with the Wisconsin card sorting test exploring the moderating effect of gender and stress.Psychological research · 2023Article
- Article
- Effects of neuromodulation on cognitive and emotional responses to psychosocial stressors in healthy humans.Neurobiology of stress · 2023Review
- Physical Stress Attenuates Cognitive Inhibition: An fNIRS Examination.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2022Article
- Stress can lead to an increase in smartphone use in the context of texting while walking.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Perceived chronic stress influences the effect of acute stress on cognitive flexibility.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) associated with reduced cognitive flexibility in both college and community samples.PloS one · 2021Article
- Athlete-Specific Neural Strategies under Pressure: A fNIRS Pilot Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Cognitive, Affective, and Feedback-Based Flexibility - Disentangling Shared and Different Aspects of Three Facets of Psychological Flexibility.Journal of cognition · 2020Article
- New Directions in Exercise Prescription: Is There a Role for Brain-Derived Parameters Obtained by Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy?Brain sciences · 2020Article
- On fractality of functional near-infrared spectroscopy signals: analysis and applications.Neurophotonics · 2020Article
- A Neuroergonomics Approach to Mental Workload, Engagement and Human Performance.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cognitive processes that afford us the ability to control thoughts and achieve goal-directed behavior are known as executive functions. Empirical evidence in the past few years has demonstrated that executive functions can be influenced by acute stress. The impact of acute stress on cognitive flexibility, a key aspect of executive functions, has received little attention in the literature. We present the results of two experiments conducted to examine the effect of acute stress on cognitive flexibility. Acute stress was induced using the cold pressor task. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Across both experiments acute stress had an attenuating effect on task switching on the WCST. Our findings also indicate that this effect was moderated by the participant's gender. In Study 1, we observed that following stress exposure male participants in the stress condition made more perseverative errors than participants in the control group. In Study 2, we examined the bilateral hemodynamics in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during acute stress induction using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Our analysis indicated that functional oxyHb signals fluctuated with greater amplitude than systemic components for participants in the stress group relative to those in the control group. In addition, oxyHb levels post stress induction were correlated with performance on the WCST for the male participants in the stress group only. Concordant with previous reports, our findings indicate that acute stress impacts cognitive flexibility in males and females differentially. Our work also demonstrates the feasibility of using fNIRS as a practical and objective technique for the examination of hemodynamics in the PFC during acute stress.
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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.