Psychobiology and molecular genetics of resilience

Abstract

Every individual experiences stressful life events. In some cases acute or chronic stress leads to depression and other psychiatric disorders, but most people are resilient to such effects. Recent research has begun to identify the environmental, genetic, epigenetic and neural mechanisms that underlie resilience, and has shown that resilience is mediated by adaptive changes in several neural circuits involving numerous neurotransmitter and molecular pathways. These changes shape the functioning of the neural circuits that regulate reward, fear, emotion reactivity and social behaviour, which together are thought to mediate successful coping with stress.

Personality traits in rats predict vulnerability and resilience to developing stress-induced depression-like behaviors, HPA axis hyper-reactivity and brain changes in pERK1/2 activity

“…However, all individuals are not equally susceptible to the adverse effects of stress; some individuals are resistant to stress, whereas others show a high vulnerability to stress (Southwick et al, 2005;Feder et al, 2009). Both genetic factors and factors related to the individual's life history have been implicated in this susceptibility variation (Southwick et al, 2005;Feder et al, 2009;Sandi and Richter-Levin, 2009). These factors determine, among other things, an individual's personality traits, coping styles and other behavioral and physiological characteristics that have been hypothesized to be involved in the link between stress and psychopathology.…”

Resilience and mental health

“…Phenotype advantages related to stress reactivity and modulated by hormonal, autonomic and central neurotransmitter balance (Young & Altemus, 2004;Davydov et al, 2007 andFeder et al, 2009) Global mental health ‗fortification' with vitamin enrichment of food in national nutrition programs (Alpert et al, 2000) 2. Adaptive or specific to adversity/pathogen barriers 2 a) Passive barrier after resilience transfer 3…”

“…Epigenetic mechanisms of acquiring stress responsiveness (Feder et al, 2009) Cognitive reappraisals for being able to regulate emotion oneself (selfregulation of emotions) (Schaal et al, 2009) …”

Invited Commentary: Resilience and Positive Youth Development Frameworks in Developmental Science

“…Resilience science also has a rapidly growing emphasis on processes within the individual organism, building on new tools for assessing genes and epigenetic processes, imaging brain function, and measuring the function of other systems in the organism that have made it possible to build an empirical body of knowledge on the neurobiology of adaptive function in development (Cicchetti 2010(Cicchetti , 2013Feder et al 2009;Karatoreos and McEwen 2013;Kim-Cohen and Turkewitz 2012;Southwick et al 2011).…”