{
  "id": 1982103,
  "title": "Linking post-stress brain connectivity to acute cortisol reactivity using network-based inference and prediction",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/19/linking-post-stress-brain-connectivity-to-acute-cortisol-reactivity",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-19T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.14.744860v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Acute cortisol responses to psychosocial stress differ greatly among individuals, but the relationship between cortisol levels and post-stress brain connectivity is not well understood. Previous studies have been limited by small sample sizes, region-of-interest approaches, and a focus on group-level analyses. This study aimed to determine if acute cortisol increase is associated with and can be predicted from whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) using network-based inference and prediction techniques.\n\nThe researchers analyzed 339 healthy participants from two ScanSTRESS datasets. First, they used the Network-Based Statistic (NBS) to identify connected rsFC networks associated with acute cortisol increase, while controlling for age, site, and sex/hormonal status. Next, they used NBS-Predict and Connectome-Based Predictive Modeling (CPM) to predict participants' acute cortisol increase from their connectivity patterns.\n\nThe results showed that greater cortisol responses were linked to lower post-stress rsFC within a significant distributed network of 258 connections among 78 regions. This network was centered on thalamic nuclei and pallidal regions and extended to default-mode, limbic, orbitofrontal, and cerebellar regions. The study found a significant negative association between cortisol responses and rsFC in females, although formal sex-difference contrasts were not significant.\n\nFurthermore, NBS-Predict and CPM yielded modest but significant out-of-sample prediction of acute cortisol increase. The predictive networks converged on subcortical and posterior cingulate regions, suggesting a network-level perspective on neural-endocrine coupling following acute stress. In conclusion, post-stress rsFC carries both inferential and predictive information about individual hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis reactivity.",
  "summary": "Background: Acute cortisol responses to psychosocial stress vary substantially across individuals, yet how this variability is reflected in post-stress resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) remains unclear. Although prior work has linked stress-related endocrine responses to brain connectivity, studies have been limited by small samples, region-of-interest approaches, or a sole focus on…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}