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Stability of individual differences in cellular immune responses to two different laboratory tasks
Author(s) -
Marsland Anna L.,
Henderson Brent N.,
Chambers William H.,
Baum Andrew
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/1469-8986.3960865
Subject(s) - psychology , stability (learning theory) , immune system , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , social psychology , immunology , biology , machine learning , computer science
To explore the stability of immune reactivity across laboratory tasks, we correlated enumerative and functional lymphocyte responses to a speech task and a mental arithmetic task, delivered on the same occasion of testing in 31 healthy undergraduates. Both tasks were associated with an increase in peripheral CD8+ and CD56+ cell populations, and a decrease in proliferative response to phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and ratio of CD4:CD8 cells. Intertask correlations were significant for the magnitude of change in proliferative responses at two different concentrations of PHA, r = 0.76, p < .0001 and r = 0.46, p < .05, and in numbers of circulating CD56+ cells, r = 0.46, p < .005. Concomitant heart rate and systolic blood pressure responses also correlated significantly over the two experimental tasks (heart rate: r = 0.52 and systolic blood pressure: r = 0.58. p s < .0005). These data provide initial evidence that interindividual variability of some cellular immune responses is moderately reproducible across different stimulus conditions, providing further evidence that it may denote a stable individual difference.