Reconfiguration of default mode metabolic demands and network organization during acute stress

In the brain during acute psychosocial stress, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) emerges as a stress-processing hub with increased glucose metabolism and attenuated BOLD deactivations.

• Why it matters: Maladaptive stress responses and reduced resilience raise risk for psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, yet the brain’s metabolic response to stress is not well characterized.
• What they did: Using simultaneous [18F]FDG PET/MRI during the Montreal Imaging Stress Task, multimodal analyses assessed glucose metabolism, BOLD activation, and functional connectivity, linking these to endocrine stress responsivity and resilience sub scores.
• The result: Stress reconfigures default mode network organization: PCC connectivity within the DMN decreases while influence onto frontoparietal and dorsal attention networks increases, and resilience-linked endocrine responsivity is reflected in ACC metabolism and its inverse relation to anterior insula connectivity.

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