Linking post-stress brain connectivity to acute cortisol reactivity using network-based inference and prediction

Abstract

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 group-level analyses. Here, we investigated whether acute cortisol increase is associated with, and can be predicted from, whole-brain post-stress rsFC. Methods: We analyzed 339 healthy participants from two ScanSTRESS datasets using complementary inferential and predictive approaches. First, we used the Network-Based Statistic (NBS) to identify connected rsFC networks associated with acute cortisol increase, controlling for age, site, and sex/hormonal status. Second, we predicted participants' acute cortisol increase from their connectivity patterns using NBS-Predict and Connectome-Based Predictive Modeling (CPM). Together, we examined the cortisol-rsFC relationship at the population and individual levels. Results: Greater cortisol responses were associated with lower post-stress rsFC within a significant distributed network comprising 258 connections among 78 regions, centered on thalamic nuclei and pallidal regions and extending to default-mode, limbic, orbitofrontal, and cerebellar regions. Sex-stratified analyses revealed a significant negative association only in females, but formal sex-difference contrasts were not significant. NBS-Predict and CPM yielded modest but significant out-of-sample prediction, with predictive networks converging on subcortical and posterior cingulate regions. Conclusions: Post-stress rsFC carries convergent inferential and predictive information about individual HPA-axis reactivity. Stronger cortisol responses were characterized by reduced connectivity within a distributed subcortical-cingulate network, supporting a network-level perspective on neural-endocrine coupling following acute stress.