Fig. 1.

The acute versus chronic SEFL protocol, in contrast to other common acute versus chronic stress (e.g., immobilization stress) protocols, isolates chronicity as a variable. Depicted: Chronic immobilization stress (IS) differs from acute IS not only in terms of chronicity of the stressor, but also in terms of total stress volume. Conversely, the chronic SEFL resembles acute SEFL in terms of the total amount of time exposed to the stressor context, the pattern of variable inter-stressor context exposure times, as well as total stress volume during stressor presentations, and only differs from acute SEFL in the chronicity of the stressor presentations.