Decision-making under stress: the importance of cortico-limbic circuits

In many domains of society, such as the military, the police force, financial businesses and health care, decisions are made under stressful conditions. Often, only a thin line separates success from failure. In the latter case this may lead to personal dismay and public or political upheaval. Although this is clearly recognized in job-related areas using training and assessment programmes directed at addressing e.g. stress-sensitivity of employees, it is only recently that research is disentangling the effects of stress on decision-making in formal research tasks. Brain areas crucial to optimal decision-making encompass interconnected cortico-limbic circuits that are sensitive to and often disrupted by stress through actions of noradrenaline and/or cortisol. More research in this field will reveal the origin and nature of individual differences in stress-related deficits on decision-making. It will also help to develop and further improve existing methods to assess stress-sensitivity and formulate prevention procedures.

Here, we wish to address recent advances in stress-induced changes in decision-making as a consequence of stress-induced changes in cortico-limbic circuits. Topics of interest are: individual differences (genetic, environmental, personality-related), gender-differences, immediate and delayed effects of stress (cortisol), dynamics of noradrenergic and cortisol effects, differences between acute and chronic stress, the power and limitations of animal models including zebrafish, neural underpinning of stress-related effects, goal-directed behaviour and habit formation, and the application of knowledge to societal domains of interest (military, police force et cetera).