ReviewNeurobiology of stress2022
The neural correlates of psychosocial stress: A systematic review and meta-analysis of spectral analysis EEG studies.
Review in Neurobiology of stress, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
47 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 105 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Inter-individual variability in neural response to low doses of LSD.Translational psychiatry · 2024Trial
- Beyond neural oscillations: Stress-related aperiodic activity and aperiodic-oscillatory spectral covariation.iScience · 2026Article
- Effects of Alpha Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation on Stress Reactivity and Decision Making: A Randomized Sham-Controlled Trial.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Lower breathing frequencies in personalized slow-paced breathing enhance relaxation and reduce arousal.iScience · 2026Article
- Linking Psychophysiological Markers To Situational Performance: An EEG Study of Police Cadets during Critical Incident Simulations.Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback · 2026Article
- Integrated brain and body mechanisms underlying acute stress and trauma-related vulnerability.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Application of Filter Bank to Improve Fatigue Monitoring in Wearable EEG-Based Brain-Computer Interface.NeuroSci · 2026Article
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- Uncertain Drop vs. Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor: Uncertain Stress Elicits Stronger Psychophysiological Responses and Differential Neural Oscillatory Patterns.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Signal-specific performance of in-ear EEG: strengths and limitations.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Social and physiological stress elicit divergent psycho-physiological dynamics and motor cortex activation.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Viewing social isolation as a complex dynamical system: A theoretical and computational framework.NPP - digital psychiatry and neuroscience · 2025Article
- Single- and Multimodal Deep Learning of EEG and EDA Responses to Construction Noise: Performance and Ablation Analyses.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- EEG-Based Prediction of Stress Responses to Naturalistic Decision-Making Stimuli in Police Cadets.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Gamma and Psychological Resilience: Where to Now?Brain sciences · 2025Review
- A Novel Optimized Hybrid Deep Learning Framework for Mental Stress Detection Using Electroencephalography.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Neural Correlates of Burnout Syndrome Based on Electroencephalography (EEG)-A Mechanistic Review and Discussion of Burnout Syndrome Cognitive Bias Theory.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Whereas the link between psychosocial stress and health complications has long been established, the influence of psychosocial stress on brain activity is not yet completely understood. Electroencephalography (EEG) has been regularly employed to investigate the neural aspects of the psychosocial stress response, but these results have not yet been unified. Therefore, in this article, we systematically review the current EEG literature in which spectral analyses were employed to investigate the neural psychosocial stress response and interpret the results with regard to the three stress phases (anticipatory, reactive, and recovery) in which the response can be divided. Our results show that three EEG measures, alpha power, beta power and frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA), are commonly utilized and that alpha power consistently decreases, beta power shows a tendency to increase, and FAA varies inconsistently. We furthermore found that whereas changes in alpha power are independent of the stress phase, and changes in beta power show a relative stress phase independent trend, other EEG measures such as delta power, theta power, relative gamma and theta-alpha power ratio show less stress phase independent changes. Meta-analyses conducted on alpha power, beta power and FAA further revealed a significant effect size (hedge's g = 0.6; p = 0.001) for alpha power, but an insignificant effect size for beta power (hedge's g = -0.31; p = 0.29) and FAA (hedge's g = 0.01, p = 0.93). From our results, it can be concluded that psychosocial stress results in significant changes in some spectral EEG indices, but that more research is needed to further uncover the precise (temporal) mechanisms underlying these neural responses.
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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.