The impact of acute psychological stress on cognitive control and rTMS modulation

The present study aimed to investigate the influences of acute psychological stress on dual mechanisms of control (DMC), namely proactive control and reactive control. Furthermore, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was activated by high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (HF-rTMS) to investigate its role in stress regulation and DMC. The induction of stress was achieved using the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) for the stress-no TMS and TMS-stress groups, while a placebo TSST was administered to the control group. Prior to stress induction, HF-rTMS was applied to activate the left DLPFC in the TMS-stress group. All groups then underwent an AX-Continuous Performance Task. The results showed that, (1) Compared to the control group, the stress-no TMS group showed impaired reactive control, potentially due to a reduction in attentional resources allocated to the probe. (2) In comparison to the stress-no TMS group, the TMS-stress group exhibited enhanced proactive and reactive control, potentially attributed to an increased utilization of contextual cues, allocation of attentional resources towards the probe, and improved conflict resolution. These results demonstrated that acute psychological stress impairs reactive control, and the left DLPFC plays an important role in both stress regulation and DMC.