Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 16 pp 19996—20015

Stress-induced aberrations in sensory processing predict worse cognitive outcomes in healthy aging adults

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Figure 6. Evoked somatosensory neural responses are unaffected by stressors. (Top Panel): Multiple regressions of life stress (i.e., allostatic load, left), biological stress (i.e., relative age acceleration, middle) and their interaction (i.e., cumulative stress, right) on sensory gating in the time-domain. Raincloud plots (combined box plot, histogram distribution and individual scattered data points) denote somatosensory outcome metrics at low and high levels of the stressor (i.e., ±0.5 SDs). Life, biological and cumulative stress were not significantly predictive of gating in the time-domain. (Bottom Panel): Follow-up regressions of life and biological stress on neural response to stimulation 1 and 2 sequentially in the paired-pulse paradigm also showed no change in time-domain response power as a function of life stress, although increases in relative age acceleration were significantly predictive of greater neural responses to the second stimulation, but not the first. All axes are fixed for each graph per row. *p < .05.