Acute effects of 40 mg cortisol on mental functions II

Rationale: Earlier reports in de scientific literature and other studeis of the
present researcher suggest that exgoneous
cortisol can have acute effects on the (attentive) cognitive processing of
threat-related stimuli. Results obtained with
several different cognitive and psychophysiological methods do however not
always overlap in detail. A factor that seems
to be of relevance is if the emotional stimuli are relevant or irrelevant to
task performance, This needs to be specified and
tested by means of systematic manipulation of this factor.

The closer examination of acute effects of a single administration cortisol.
compared to placebo, on different aspects of attention and other cognitive
processing of emotionally relevant stimuli in healthy young men. The central
question is what role taskrelevance of the emotional stimuli plays. This can
provied new information about the role that cortisol plays in processes of
emotion regulation which are important in affective disorders. This mainly
serves a fundamental scientific purpose.

A doubleblind, placebo-controlled cross over experiment to test acute effects
of 40 mg hydrocortisone on performance on different cognitive computertests.

Participants will receive placebo and 40 mg hydrocortisone once.

Burden, risks and benefits for participants: De main bnurden for the aprticipan
probably lies in the time investment
(approximately 6 hours). Performance of several cognitively mildly taxing
computertasks can be experienc4ed as boring or
tiresome. Single adminstration of 40 mg hydrocortisone does not lead to
subjectively noticeable effects on physical of
mental functioning and is safe and non-hazardous. Other than a relatively small
monetary incentive (50 euro's) there is no
direct benefit for participation to the study.