The team of Alicia Salvador has participated in ICAP Montreal 2018 with the following symposium:

Stress and cortisol: moderating factors and intervention targets to reduce the negative effects of stress.

Stress and cortisol are considered core components of many psychological disorders and physical problems, including depression, anxiety-related disorders, cognitive impairment and metabolic disorders.

This symposium explores different factors that are critical to understanding the inter-individual differences in the relationship between stress and cortisol. Most psychological treatments for stressrelated disorders are focused on improving stress regulation. To refine these treatments, it is crucial to understand what factors may explain the physiological stress response and the relationship between endogenous cortisol and stress. This symposium offers novel approaches to possible intervention targets to improve stress regulation and/or to mitigate the negative effects of stress.

In this symposium, different approaches are used to investigate stress (acute social stress, competition, cognitive stress, long-term perceived stress) and to measure cortisol levels (salivary cortisol response, diurnal cortisol secretion, hair cortisol) in different populations (healthy young and older adults and people with type 2 diabetes).

• Thus, Malgorzata Kozusznik and Sara Puig-Perez describe how meaning in life and optimism, respectively, can mitigate the negative effect of stress in healthy adults (M.Kozusznik) and people with Type 2 diabetes (S.Puig-Perez).
  • Kozusznik, G. The moderating role of meaning in life in the relationship between perceived stress and diurnal cortisol.
  • Puig-Pérez, S. Optimism moderates psychophysiological responses to stress in older people with type 2 diabetes.

• Matias Pulopulos illustrates how physiological regulation during stress anticipation explain differences in the stress response.
  • Pulopulos, M. Stress anticipation and inter-individual differences in the cortisol response to stress.

• Vanesa Hidalgo proves the critical role of causal attribution in the physiological response to competition.
  • Hidalgo, V. Importance of causal attribution for psychobiological response to competititon in young men.

• Finally, Carolina Villada explores how the risk for cognitive decline in healthy older people may explain differences in hair cortisol, a measure of long-term stress exposure.
  • Villadsa, C. Electroencephalographic risk for cognitive decline and long-term stress exposure: associations between hair cortisol and cognitive performance in healthy older people.

Each presentation provides novel findings and a unique approach to investigate stress.

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