Abstract
Mental stress increases blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR), although muscle sympathetic nerve reactivity (MSNA) differs between individuals. PURPOSE: Anticipatory stress alone causes a cardiovascular and autonomic response to a stressful situation before it occurs. However, the reproducibility of the autonomic response to anticipatory stress remains unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate the reproducibility of the autonomic response to anticipatory stress in healthy adults. We hypothesize the autonomic system will have a reproducible response during anticipatory stress. METHODS: Twenty-one adults (9 male, 12 female; 25±6 years old, BMI: 24± 3kg/m2) underwent the Tier Social Stress Test (TSST) twice with a month between each study. The TSST consisted of a baseline (10 min), speech preparation (5 min), speech delivery (5 min), mental math (5 min), and recovery (5 min). There were simultaneous recordings of beat-to-beat BP, continuous HR, and MSNA from the fibular nerve during the TSST. These recordings were used to quantify mean arterial BP (MAP), MSNA burst frequency (BF) and burst index (BI), HR variability (HRV), sympathetic baroreflex sensitivity (sBRS), cardiovagal BRS (cvBRS), and t50. Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICCs) were used to measure the reproducibility of the autonomic system response RESULTS: MAP (ICC=0.664, P=0.003) demonstrated moderate reliability (ICC=0.5-0.75) while MSNA BF (ICC=0.812, P=0.004), MSNA BI (ICC=0.767, P=0.010), and sBRS (ICC=0.760, P=0.005) exhibited good reliability (ICC=0.75-0.9). There was poor reliability for HR (P=0.197), high frequency HRV (P=0.656), cvBRS up (P=0.296), cvBRS down (P=0.111), or t50 (P=0.190) (all ICC < 0.812). CONCLUSION: The present study observed a reproducible response in the sympathetic system with a seemingly paradoxical decrease in MSNA during anticipatory stress. However, the parasympathetic system did not show a reproducible response. These findings provide more insight to the reproducibility and variability among responses of the cardiovascular system during anticipatory mental stress
Recommended Citation
Beisert, Jenna-Marie; Bigalke, Jennifer; Bigalke, Jeremy; and Carter, Jason
(2025)
"Reproducibility of the Autonomic Response during Anticipatory Stress,"
International Journal of Exercise Science: Conference Proceedings: Vol. 2:
Iss.
17, Article 29.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ijesab/vol2/iss17/29
