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Supplemental digital content is available in the text.

White matter hyperintensity (WMH) confers increased mortality risk in patients with cardiovascular diseases. However, little is known about differences in survival times among adults 65 years and older who have WMH and live in the community. To characterize the factors that may reduce mortality risk in the presence of WMH, measures of race, sex, apolipoprotein E4, neuroimaging, and cardiometabolic, physiological, and psychosocial characteristics were examined, with a particular focus on information processing as measured by the Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST).

Socioeconomic disadvantage confers risk for ill health. Historically, the pathways by which socioeconomic disadvantage may affect health have been viewed from epidemiological perspectives emphasizing environmental, behavioral, and biopsychosocial risk factors. Such perspectives, however, have yet to integrate findings from emerging neuroscience studies demonstrating that indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage relate to patterns of brain morphology and functionality that have been associated with aspects of mental, physical, and cognitive health over the lifecourse. This commentary considers findings from one such study appearing in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.It reports that an area-level indicator of socioeconomic disadvantage relates to cortical morphology in brain regions important for language, executive control, and other cognitive and behavioral functions—possibly via a systemic inflammatory pathway. These findings are put into context by discussing broader questions and challenges that need to be addressed in order for neuroscience approaches to a) become better integrated with existing epidemiological perspectives and b) more fully advance our understanding of the pathways by which socioeconomic disadvantage becomes embodied by the brain in relation to health.

Psychological stress and sleep disturbances are highly prevalent and are both implicated in the etiology of cardiovascular diseases. Given the common co-occurrence of psychological distress and sleep disturbances including short sleep duration, this study examined the combined effects of these two factors on blood pressure reactivity to immediate mental challenge tasks after well-rested and sleep-deprived experimental conditions.

To evaluate the impact of acute stress and relationship-focused imagery on cardiac vagal control, as indicated by levels of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), in depressed and nondepressed women. Impairment in cardiac parasympathetic (vagal) control may confer risk for cardiac mortality in depressed populations.

Across individuals, risk for poor health varies inversely with socioeconomic position (SEP). The pathways by which SEP affects health have been viewed from many epidemiological perspectives. Central to these perspectives is the notion that socioeconomic health disparities arise from an interplay between nested, recursive, and cumulative environmental, social, familial, psychological, behavioral, and physiological processes that unfold over the life span. Epidemiological perspectives on socioeconomic health disparities, however, have not yet formally integrated emerging findings from neuropharmacological, molecular genetic, and neuroimaging studies demonstrating that indicators of SEP relate to patterns of brain neurotransmission, brain morphology, and brain functionality implicated in the etiology of chronic medical conditions and psychological disorders. Here, we survey these emerging findings and consider how future neurobiological studies in this area can enhance our understanding of the pathways by which different dimensions of SEP become embodied by the brain to influence health throughout life.

Objective indices of socioeconomic status (SES) predict diverse sources of morbidity and mortality as well as numerous biological and behavioral risk factors for disease. Here we examine whether subjective measures of SES may be similarly associated with measured risk factors including the metabolic syndrome and its components of elevated blood pressure, high fasting glucose, dyslipidemia, and central adiposity.

To test whether current gray matter volume (GMV) covaried with previously obtained longitudinal measures of weight gain—as assessed by increases in body mass index (BMI)—among otherwise healthy postmenopausal women. Cross-sectional results indicate that reduced GMV may be associated with excess body weight.

To assess depression, anxiety, and anger as well as the variance that these emotions share (conceptualized as negative affect) in relationship to high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), a specific indicator of parasympathetic cardiac autonomic function related to premature cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Although individual trait negative emotions have been studied in relation to risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) as well as biological mechanisms leading to CHD end points (e.g., autonomic nervous system ANS dysfunction), the degree to which a general tendency to experience negative emotions may account for these relations is not known.

To examine whether high-frequency heart rate variability, an indirect measure of parasympathetic (vagal) control over variations in heart rate, is associated with immune reactivity to an in vitro inflammatory challenge. Convergent evidence from the animal literature shows that the autonomic nervous system plays a key role in regulating the magnitude of immune responses to inflammatory stimuli. Signaling by the parasympathetic system inhibits the production of proinflammatory cytokines by activated monocytes/macrophages and thus decreases local and systemic inflammation. As yet, no direct human evidence links parasympathetic activity to inflammatory competence.