The Stressed Brain: Neural Underpinnings of Social Stress Processing in Humans

Brain–body pathways linking racism and health.

“…This is consistent with the generalized unsafety theory of stress (Brosschot et al, 2017, 2018), which argues that, for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, the brain and body operate in a constant state of “unsafety” characterized by vigilance and chronic activation of neural and physiological stress systems. These findings are also consistent with research on other types of social stress (e.g., social rejection, social evaluation), which finds greater activity in regions of the salience network (e.g., ACC, insula) in response to socially stressful experiences (see Berretz et al, 2021; Muscatell et al, 2021, for a review).…”

“…For the brains and bodies of Black individuals, prior experiences of racism might change how the brain manages resources in preparation for encountering potentially threatening or ambiguous social situations. For example, the brain may need to increase cognitive resources and attention to navigate ambiguous or stressful social interactions appropriately (e.g., facilitated by the executive control neural network), while also carefully considering both one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and those of an interaction partner so as to navigate the interaction as smoothly as possible (e.g., facilitated by the default mode neural network), and simultaneously attending to internal physiological changes that might provide cues to if one should prepare to fight or flee a social interaction (e.g., facilitated by the salience and allostatic–interoceptive neural networks; Muscatell et al, 2021). Over time, this frequent preparation in response to racism may shift the brain to maintain increases in certain neural and physiological resources at “default” (Brosschot et al, 2018) to most efficiently prepare to engage in racist social interactions and to cope with their aftereffects (Meyer, 2019).…”

“…To date, these hypotheses are speculative, in part because there is an extremely limited neuroimaging literature that has investigated links between racism and neural functioning. However, given the importance of these networks for responding to other types of social stressors that share features with racism (e.g., socioeconomic deprivation, negative social evaluation, social rejection; Muscatell et al, 2021), it is plausible that similar networks would undergird responses to racism. We also note that all of the limited neuroimaging research on the neural consequences of racism that has been conducted to date has focused on interpersonal racism, despite the important role that structural, cultural, internalized, and vicarious racism also play in health.…”

Blood Pressure and Social Algesia: The Unexpected Relationship Between the Cardiovascular System and Sensitivity to Social Pain

“…Brain regions related to social pain (Eisenberger, 2012) are also part of what is often called the central autonomic network, which may regulate BP (Gianaros & Jennings, 2018). Acute experiences of social pain, such as social rejection, social evaluation, and reliving previous experiences of social pain, engage the cingulate, insula, and medial and lateral prefrontal cortex as compared with control conditions without social pain (Muscatell et al, 2021). These regions also share bidirectional feedback loops between the body and brain.…”

Recent Developments in Protein Lactylation in PTSD and CVD: Novel Strategies and Targets

“…For example, stressors, such as medical illnesses or social rejection, activate the sympathetic-adreno-medullar (SAM) system, inducing immediate adaptation as well as delayed hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) responses [81,82]. In the central nervous system (CNS), biological and psychological stressors are processed by different pathways, which are believed to converge at the level of the amygdala [83,84]. Amygdala, a sensor for both biological and psychological stressors, functions to activate the HPA axis and restore homeostasis [85].…”