Evoked Acute Stress Alters Frontal Midline Neural Oscillations Affecting Behavioral Inhibition in College Students

The current research of the effect of acute stress on individual behavioral inhibition remains divergent. The present study aims to explore the effects of acute stress on behavioral inhibition in college students and to understand the neural oscillatory characteristics of their behavioral inhibition process.

We invited 27 college students (12 males and 15 females) to participate in the study. The experiment was conducted using the Trier Social Stress paradigm to evoke an acute stress state and an out-of-speech reading to set a neutral state. Participants completed a two-choice Oddball task in the acute stress state and the neutral state, respectively. We used a 64-channel EEG cap to record EEG data from university students during the experimental task. In combination with the ERO technique, we compared the reaction time, the number of errors, and the power of the alpha (8-13 Hz) and theta (4-8 Hz) frequency bands at the midline of the frontal lobe for subjects in both states. The correlation between the area under the stress area line and the alpha as well as theta frequency bands was also analyzed.

We found that in the two-choice Oddball task, the response inhibition time was shorter, the number of response errors decreased, and the alpha-band power values decreased in the acute stress state compared to the neutral state. For the standard stimulus, the theta-band power increase in the acute stress state.

Our results suggest that evoked acute stress promotes behavioral inhibition in college students by affecting their frontal midline neural oscillations.