ABSTRACT

Stress and stress-related health impairments are becoming one of the major problems in our modern societies. To date, big challenges are to understand and unravel factors of the intra- and interindividual variability of psychoneuroendocrine stress regulation, to mediate between health and disease, and to potentially develop new therapeutic strategies. The aim of this chapter is first to give an overview of basic concepts of stress and stress biology. Here, we also present recent methodological approaches to studying human stress responses in social neuroendocrinology, including psychosocial stress induction paradigms in laboratory and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) environments as well as approaches in ambulatory assessment (AA) studies. Then, a comprehensive summary of important determinants of the human cortisol stress response as well as practical recommendations is provided.