Acute Stress Affects The EEG Study Of Divergent Thinking Processes

This article,by referencing cognitive behavioral and EEG experiments in physiological and biochemical tests in multiple perspectives,investigated the cognitive neural mechanism.During the behavior experiment,the researcher used one factor design experiment(stress group;control group).Participants were asked to take the standardized Trier Social Stress Test(TSST),and this project chose Alternative Use Test(AUT)as the dependent variable.The scores of objective affections was measured and the salivary cortisol was assessed.The result showed that three dimensions of AUT,which was fluency,flexibility and originality was undermined by acute stress.The EEG experiment used Stress State(before stress;after stress)×TIME(intervall[1-3.67s],interval2[3.67-6.33s],interval3[6.33-9s])within subjects.Participants,before and after stress task(Montreal Imaging Stress Task,MIST)worked on the Alternative Uses Task while their EEGs were recorded and changed in task-related power(relative to rest)in the upper-frequency band(10-12 Hz)for three isochronous time intervals of the idea generation period were evaluated.During the stress task,salivary of participants were collected to analyze salivary cortisol and salivary alpha amylase.The behavioral results revealed that acute stress impaires the originality in AUT.The EEG results indicated that there was a general increase of alpha power at the beginning of idea generation that was followed by a decrease and finally decreased continuously apart from the frontal cortex.Participants only showed synchronization at the first stage before stress,but there was no synchronization all the time-course after stress.We assumed that stress primarily affected the phase that was related to the memory and attention.In summary,acute stress impaired divergent thinking and affects primarily on the earlier phase in creative cognitive process.