*4.2. Experimental Procedure*

The experiment started with an approximately 30 min period in which the participating women could adapt and settle down. In this period, general questions were asked, electrodes were attached, and the electrophysiological signals were checked. The fully automated study protocol including highly synchronously transmitted physiological signals started with the perceived stress questionnaire, to measure chronic stress experience, and the depression scale (CES-D), as well as some other questionnaires that are not relevant to this paper [75,76]. After a 5 min resting period in which the participants were asked to remain seated, not to speak, and to relax, the memory task was explained using a prerecorded auditory instruction backed by corresponding information on a computer screen. To increase the self-relevance of the task and hence its stressful character, participants were told that their test performance would be evaluated by colleagues from the psychiatry department who would determine whether their mnemonic abilities corresponded to their age or if they indicated premature aging of the brain. The task was to recall as many words as they could from a list of words taken from a standardized memory test [77]. After the participants had confirmed that they had understood the instruction, the memory task was provided in a fully automated manner. Following completion of the memory task, there was another 5 min relaxation period, and participants subsequently rated how di fficult and how stressful they had perceived the task to be, on two 17-point rating scales (ranging from "not di fficult at all" to "extremely di fficult" and from "not stressful at all" to "extremely stressful" [78–80]. Participants remained seated during the entire study protocol.
