Resumo

RODRIGUEZ MEDINA, David Alberto  e  HERNANDEZ POZO, María del Rocío. Affective Thermoregulation: Biopsychosocial Functioning of the Social Stress Response in Post-Earthquake University Students of 19S. Acta de investigación psicol [online]. 2021, vol.11, n.1, pp.73-83.  Epub 14-Jan-2022. ISSN 2007-4719.  https://doi.org/10.22201/fpsi.20074719e.2021.1.375.

The exposure to the earthquake of September 19 (19-S) 2017 in Mexico City was perceived as a stressor. In people with a biopsychosocial vulnerability to developing acute and post-traumatic stress disorder, high sympathetic activity occurs. A non-invasive measure to assess sympathetic tone is nasal temperature. Recent studies suggest that in people with post-traumatic stress a stressor induces a prolonged nasal thermal drop, while non-harmful thermal stimulation can improve mood. The present study proposes an affective thermoregulation process: the nasal thermal decrease during an acute social stress task and the nasal thermal increase during relaxation in university students exposed to the 19-S earthquake while holding a non-harmful thermal stimulus in their hands. A quasi-experimental repeated measures design was used to evaluate affective thermoregulation in 21 students, 20 days after 19-S. The level of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, alexithymia, social support, and perception of stress was also evaluated. The results indicated that the nasal temperature decreased with the stressor (p <0.001); 38% of the group increased their temperature (p <0.05) during relaxation, while 62% of the group did not reverse the thermal drop (p> 0.05). When analyzing the psychosocial differences, the perceived stress was lower in those who increased their nasal temperature (p <0.05). The stress level revealed a direct relationship between the anxiety, depression, and alexithymia score, and an inverse relationship with social support. Thermoregulation can be considered as a biomarker of emotional regulation capacity.

Palavras-chave : TSST-C; Nasal Temperature; Stress; Relaxation; Thermal Stimulation.

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