Correlatos Neurais do Estresse Percebido: Uma Investigação Preliminar

Abstract

Currently, there is a growing interest in the neural correlates of stress obtained through electroencephalography (EEG), with a view to its use in clinical diagnosis and support for the treatment of various psychopathologies. One of the main neural correlates of stress, identified through the EEG, is a greater activation of the right region of the frontal cortex in relation to the left region, indicated by the calculation of frontal alpha asymmetry (frontal alpha asymmetry). Some studies have also correlated elevated beta power in the frontal region of the cortex with stress. Most studies, however, have the experimental induction of stress as a design and there are few that involved stress in naturalistic situations, that is, non-induced stress. This study aimed to investigate neural correlates of perceived stress in a naturalistic way, evaluating the level of correlation between perceived stress (measured by the Perceived Stress Scale) and the values of frontal alpha asymmetry, alpha power and beta power in the frontal regions of the animals. participants' brains, through electroencephalographic examination applied at rest and with eyes closed. The participants were seven graduate students from a Brazilian university. Although visual inspection of the data seems to corroborate the literature, by suggesting a positive correlation between perceived stress and greater activation of the right region of the frontal cortex in relation to the left region of the frontal cortex, the results of the correlation tests of this study did not reach statistically significant results.