0000000000023233
AUTHOR
Matias M. Pulopulos
showing 28 related works from this author
Obstructive sleep apnea and Alzheimer’s disease-related cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers in mild cognitive impairment
2020
Abstract Previous studies have demonstrated that sleep-breathing disorders, and especially obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), can be observed in patients with a higher risk of progression to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Recent evidence indicates that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) AD-biomarkers are associated with OSA. In this study, we investigated these associations in a sample of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a condition that is considered the first clinical phase of AD, when patients showed biomarkers consistent with AD pathology. A total of 57 patients (mean age = 66.19; SD = 7.13) with MCI were included in the study. An overnight polysomnography recording was used to assess objec…
Hair cortisol and cognitive performance in healthy older people
2013
Summary Worse cognitive performance in older people has been associated with hypothalamic—pituitary—adrenal axis dysregulation (in particular, higher cortisol levels). Analysis of hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) is a novel method to measure long-term cortisol exposure, and its relationship with cognition in healthy older people has not yet been studied. We investigated whether HCC (measured in hair scalp) and diurnal salivary cortisol levels (awakening, 30 min after awakening, and evening, across two days) were related to cognitive performance (assessed with the Trail-making Test A and B, Digit Span Forward and Backward, word list-RAVLT and Stories subtest of the Rivermead) in 57 healthy…
Relationship between Cortisol Changes during the Night and Subjective and Objective Sleep Quality in Healthy Older People
2020
The aim of this study was to investigate whether the nighttime cortisol release was associated with subjective and objective sleep quality and the discrepancy between them. Forty-five healthy older adults (age range from 56 to 75 years) collected salivary samples immediately before sleep and immediately after awakening on two consecutive nights. Actigraphy was used to assess objective sleep quality and quantity. A sleep diary was used to assess subjective sleep quality. Linear mixed models were performed using subjective and objective sleep quality data from 76 nights to investigate between-subject associations. We observed that larger changes in cortisol levels between sleep onset and awak…
Resilience and Psychobiological Response to Stress in Older People: The Mediating Role of Coping Strategies
2021
Resilience, the ability to overcome adversity and face stressful demands and experiences, has been strongly associated with successful aging, a low risk of diseases and high mental and physical functioning. This relationship could be based on adaptive coping behaviors, but more research is needed to gain knowledge about the strategies employed to confront social stress. Thus, we aimed to investigate the role of the use of active or passive coping strategies by resilient people in dealing with stressful situations. For this purpose, we measured resilience, coping strategies, and perceived stress in 66 healthy older adults (31 men and 35 women) between 56 and 75 years old who were exposed to …
Acute stress does not impair long-term memory retrieval in older people.
2013
Previous studies have shown that stress-induced cortisol increases impair memory retrieval in young people. This effect has not been studied in older people; however, some findings suggest that age-related changes in the brain can affect the relationships between acute stress, cortisol and memory in older people. Our aim was to investigate the effects of acute stress on long-term memory retrieval in healthy older people. To this end, 76 participants from 56 to 76 years old (38 men and 38 women) were exposed to an acute psychosocial stressor or a control task. After the stress/control task, the recall of pictures, words and stories learned the previous day was assessed. There were no differe…
Acute stress and working memory: The role of sex and cognitive stress appraisal
2016
Sex is considered a moderating factor in the relationship between stress and cognitive performance. However, sex differences and the impact of cognitive stress appraisal on working memory performance have not received much attention. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of physiological responses (heart rate and salivary cortisol) and cognitive stress appraisal in Working Memory (WM) performance in males and females. For this purpose, we subjected a comparable number of healthy young adult males (N=37) and females (N=45) to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), and we evaluated WM performance before and after the stress task. Females performed better on att…
Acute stress and working memory in older people.
2015
Several studies have shown that acute stress affects working memory (WM) in young adults, but the effect in older people is understudied. As observed in other types of memory, older people may be less sensitive to acute effects of stress on WM. We performed two independent studies with healthy older men and women (from 55 to 77 years old) to investigate the effects of acute stress (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST) and cortisol on WM. In study 1 (n = 63), after the TSST women (but not men) improved their performance on Digit Span Forward (a measure of the memory span component of WM) but not on Digit Span Backward (a measure of both memory span and the executive component of WM). Furthermore,…
Memory performance is related to the cortisol awakening response in older people, but not to the diurnal cortisol slope
2015
There are large individual differences in age-related cognitive decline. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) functioning has been suggested as one of the mechanisms underlying these differences. This study aimed to investigate the relationships between the diurnal cortisol cycle, measured as the cortisol awakening response (CAR), and the diurnal cortisol slope (DCS) and the memory performance of healthy older people. To do so, we assessed the verbal, visual, and working memory performance of 64 participants (32 men) from 57 to 76 years old who also provided 14 saliva samples on two consecutive weekdays to determine their diurnal cortisol cycle. The CAR was linearly and negatively…
Are neuroticism and extraversion related to morning cortisol release in healthy older people?
2016
The cortisol awakening response (CAR) is a discrete component of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis) function that has been widely related to both health and some personality traits. There is evidence that neuroticism and extraversion affect health and well-being and play a damaging or protective role, respectively. In this study, we aimed to explore the relationship between these personality dimensions and morning cortisol concentrations in people aged 55 or older. To do so, morning saliva samples were collected on two consecutive weekdays from a total of 160 older men and women. Neuroticism and extraversion were assessed using the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised, …
The relationship between cortisol and cognitive function in healthy older people: The moderating role of Apolipoprotein E polymorphism.
2018
The Apolipoprotein E4 (ApoE-epsilon 4) allele has been suggested as the main risk factor for late onset Alzheimer's disease (AD), whereas the ApoE-epsilon 2 allele has been proposed as a protective factor. These proposals have increased the interest in the effect of the ApoE genotype in healthy people. Additionally, high cortisol levels have been related to negative effects on cognition. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between cognitive performance and cortisol, taking into account the different ApoE alleles. For this reason, the aim of this study was to evaluate different cognitive domains (declarative and working memory, attention, and executive function) and their…
Acute stress affects free recall and recognition of pictures differently depending on age and sex.
2015
Little is known about age differences in the effects of stress on memory retrieval. Our aim was to perform an in-depth examination of acute psychosocial stress effects on memory retrieval, depending on age and sex. For this purpose, data from 52 older subjects (27 men and 25 women) were reanalyzed along with data from a novel group of 50 young subjects (26 men and 24 women). Participants were exposed to an acute psychosocial stress task (Trier Social Stress Test) or a control task. After the experimental manipulation, the retrieval of positive, negative and neutral pictures learned the previous day was tested. As expected, there was a significant response to the exposure to the stress task,…
Loneliness Mediates the Relationship Between Early Life Stress and Perceived Stress but not Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal Axis Functioning
2021
Many authors have proposed that early life stress (ELS) provokes a dysregulation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and contributes negatively to the management of stress in adulthood. However, these associations have not always been observed, making it necessary to include new factors that could explain the different results found. In this regard, people with ELS experiences report less social support during adulthood, suggesting that loneliness could be a mediating factor. Thus, our aims were to investigate whether ELS was related to both perceived stress and diurnal HPA axis activity, and whether loneliness mediates these relationships, in a community sample (N=187, 18–55ye…
Being an optimist or a pessimist and its relationship with morning cortisol release and past life review in healthy older people
2017
Investigate the relationship between optimism and pessimism and the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and past life review in healthy older people.76 older volunteers summarised their lives, highlighting the most important events, impressions and experiences. Cortisol saliva samples were collected on two consecutive weekdays. High and low optimism and pessimism groups were computed by mean split.Percentages of positive (PE) and negative events (NE) and positive (PCE) and negative cognitions and emotions (NCE) were obtained. Optimism and pessimism were measured with the Life Orientation Test Revised. The areas under the curve with respect to the ground and with respect to the increase were c…
Optimism and pessimism are related to different components of the stress response in healthy older people.
2015
Some personality traits have key importance for health because they can affect the maintenance and evolution of different disorders with a high prevalence in older people, including stress pathologies and diseases. In this study we investigated how two relevant personality traits, optimism and pessimism, affect the psychophysiological response of 72 healthy participants (55 to 76 years old) exposed to either a psychosocial stress task (Trier Social Stress Test, TSST) or a control task; salivary cortisol, heart rate (HR) and situational appraisal were measured. Our results showed that optimism was related to faster cortisol recovery after exposure to stress. Pessimism was not related to the …
Acute psychosocial stress effects on memory performance: Relevance of age and sex.
2018
In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in investigating the effects of chronic and acute stress on cognitive processes, especially memory performance. However, research focusing on acute stress effects has reported contradictory findings, probably due to the many factors that can moderate this relationship. In addition to factors related to the individual, such as sex and age, other factors, such as the type of memory assessed, can play a critical role in the direction of these effects. This review summarizes the main findings of our research group and others about the effects of acute psychosocial stress on memory performance in young and older people of both sexes, taking in…
FRN and P3 during the Iowa gambling task: The importance of gender.
2020
Previous research has shown gender-related psychobiological differences in risky and competitive strategies that affect win and loss outcomes. In addition, some studies have found differences in the decision-making process, with women taking longer to reach the same performance as men. However, the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. The present study aimed to investigate gender differences in behavioral performance and neural correlates during a decision-making task, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Forty healthy young adults (23 men and 17 women) performed the IGT while the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P3 were recorded as neural correlates of feedback processing. No gender …
The moderating role of meaning in life in the relationship between perceived stress and diurnal cortisol.
2018
Previous studies have suggested that meaning in life may buffer the negative effects of stress. This study is the first to investigate the moderating role of meaning in life in the relationship between the perception of stress and diurnal cortisol in two independent samples of healthy adults. In study 1 (n = 172, men = 82, women = 90, age range = 21-55 years, mean age = 37.58 years), the results of moderated regression analyses revealed that there was a significant positive relationship between overall perceived stress in the past month and both diurnal cortisol levels (area-under-the-curve with respect to the ground; AUCg) and the diurnal cortisol slope (DCS) only in individuals with low l…
The influence of personality on the effect of iTBS after being stressed on cortisol secretion
2019
Over the last years, individualization of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) parameters has been a focus of attention in the field of non-invasive stimulation. It has been proposed that in stress-related disorders personality characteristics may influence the clinical outcome of rTMS. However, the underlying physiological mechanisms as to how personality may affect the rTMS response to stress remains to be clarified. In this sham-controlled crossover study, after being stressed by the Trier Social Stress Test, 38 healthy females received two sessions of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. To take possible personali…
Mediation of perceived stress and cortisol in the association between neuroticism and global cognition in older adults: A longitudinal study.
2021
Neuroticism has been associated with a greater dementia risk, but its association with cognitive decline in healthy older adults remains unclear. Stress has been proposed as one of the mechanisms that could explain this relationship. Our aim was to analyse, in healthy older people, the mediating role of perceived stress and the Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal (HPA) axis in the association between neuroticism and global cognition. At Waves 1 and 2 (4-year follow-up), 87 older people (49.4% women; M age = 65.08, SD = 4.54 at Wave 1) completed a neuropsychological battery and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and provided saliva samples on two (Wave 1) and three (Wave 2) consecutive days to mea…
Diurnal cortisol secretion and health-related quality of life in healthy older people
2021
Abstract Several studies have demonstrated that a dysregulated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is related to worse health status (e.g., depression, posttraumatic stress, or diabetes, among others). However, less is known about the association between the individual's perception of their own health status and HPA-axis functioning in healthy older people. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between HPA-axis functioning and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in healthy older people. To do this, 140 healthy older people (69 men and 71 women) from 56 to 76 years old collected eight saliva samples on two consecutive weekdays to measure the diurnal cortisol c…
Cortisol awakening response and cognitive performance in hypertensive and normotensive older people.
2016
Healthy older people with a cortisol awakening response (CAR) of decreased magnitude show worse frontal cortex-related cognitive performance. Systemic hypertension has been related to a CAR of decreased magnitude. Additionally, worse executive function and processing speed have been observed in older people with systemic hypertension. This is the first study to examine the relationship between the CAR (measured with six saliva samples at home on two consecutive weekdays) and cognitive performance, in both hypertensive (n=26) and normotensive (n=28) older people (from 56 to 78years old). Hypertensive participants showed lower morning cortisol secretion, and they also woke up earlier. No diff…
Deficits in facial emotional valence processing in older people with subjective memory complaints: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence
2021
Subjective memory complaints (SMCs), which occur in the absence of clinical memory deficits, may precede mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer''s disease (AD). Some studies have reported a deficit in facial emotion processing in people with MCI or AD. However, it is unclear whether this deficit is also present in older people with SMCs. The present study used behavioral measurements and event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the facial emotion processing of 41 older people with SMCs and 38 without SMCs. The task contained 204 images displaying facial emotions (positive, negative, and neutral). In terms of behavior, our results showed that participants with SMCs were slower an…
Acute Cortisol Levels and Memory Performance in Older People with High and Normal Body Mass Index.
2019
AbstractPrevious studies have shown that healthy older adults may be less sensitive to the effects of acute cortisol levels on memory performance than young adults. Importantly, being overweight has recently been associated with an increase in both cortisol concentration and cortisol receptors in central tissues, suggesting that Body Mass Index (BMI) may contribute to differences in the relationship between memory and acute cortisol. This study investigates the role of BMI in the relationship between memory performance and acute cortisol levels in older people (M = 64.70 years; SD = 4.24). We measured cortisol levels and memory performance (working memory and declarative memory) in 33 parti…
AGE DIFFERENCES IN THE ACUTE STRESS EFFECTS ON DECLARATIVE MEMORY PERFORMANCE
2021
"In the last decades, there has been a growing interest in knowing the effects of acute stress on memory performance, particularly declarative memory. Research on this topic suggests that age is a crucial individual factor to consider in the stress-memory link. However, most of the evidence has been obtained from studies conducted in young people and, surprisingly, studies in older people are scarce. Thus, our aim was to investigate the age differences in the acute stress effects on declarative memory performance. To do this, we directly compared the effects of a psychosocial acute stressor (i.e. Trier Social Stress Test) on learning, consolidation and memory retrieval performance in two ag…
Cortisol Awakening Response and Walking Speed in Older People.
2015
In older people, less diurnal variability in cortisol levels has been consistently related to worse physical performance, especially to slower walking speed (WS). The cortisol awakening response (CAR) is a discrete component of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis that has been related to several health problems, such as cardiovascular disease and/or worse performance on executive function and memory. The relationship between the CAR and physical performance in older people is poorly understood. In this study, in 86 older people (mean age = 64.42, SD = 3.93), we investigated the relationship between the CAR and WS, a commonly used measure of physical performance in the older population t…
Subjective Memory Complaints and Decision Making in Young and Older Adults: An Event-Related Potential Study
2021
Subjective memory complaints (SMCs) may affect decision-making processes. This study aimed to investigate the neuronal correlates of feedback processing during a decision-making task in young and older adults with and without SMCs. Event-related potentials and behavioral performance during the Iowa gambling task were recorded in a total of 136 participants (65 young adults, 71 older adults). The participants were divided into two groups according to their SMCs (with SMCs: n = 60, without SMCs: n = 76). Feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P3 were analyzed in the feedback stage of the decision-making process. Older adults with SMCs scored worse in the ambiguity phase than older adults witho…
How are neuroticism and depression related to the psychophysiological stress response to acute stress in healthy older people?
2015
Neuroticism and depressive symptomatology have been related to a heightened and diminished physiological stress response, which may partly explain their negative relationship with health and wellbeing. Identifying factors that may increase disease vulnerability is especially relevant in older people, whose physiological systems decline. With this in mind, we investigated the influence of neuroticism and depression on the psychophysiological stress response in healthy older people (from 55 to 76years old). A total of 36 volunteers were exposed to a stressful task (Trier Social Stress Test, TSST), while 35 volunteers performed a control non-stressful task. The physiological stress response wa…
Hormonal changes of intimate partner violence perpetrators in response to brief social contact with women
2022
This study investigated whether men with a history of real-life aggressive, dominant behavior show increases in testosterone and cortisol levels after brief social contact with women. Furthermore, we tested the prediction that such changes in hormones would be larger than those observed previously in young male students. Sixty-seven male participants convicted of intimate partner violence (IPV) either had brief social contact with a female confederate (experimental condition) or a male confederate (control condition). We also performed meta-analyses to investigate whether IPV perpetrators' hormonal responses were larger than the typical responses of young male students in prior studies. All…