Estudìo por medio de potenciales evocados de la respuesta cortical en sujetos sometidos a dos estresores de laboratorio y su relación con la respuesta cardiovascular, endocrina y psicologica.

This thesis presents a study by visual evoked potentials of the cerebral cortex response to two laboratory stressors, a passive coping stressor, the cold pressor test and an active one, a mental arithmetic task The main objective of this work was to investigate the relationship among cortical activity with the cardiovascular response and with psychological relevant variables, like stress perception or pain. The second objective was to study the cortisol response produced by the tasks and its relationship with situational psychological variables such state anxiety, expectation and task appraisal. The last objective was to analyze gender differences in the studied variables. Our results point out that both task elicited an increase of cortisol, blood pressure, hear rate and cortical activity. This changes have correlated with emotional response. The tasks have shown different response pattern . Finally no response differences han been found between men and women. Besides our results demonstrated that visual evoked potential are a useful tool for the stres study.