Mechanisms of stress in the brain

By Bruce S. McEwen, Nicole P. Bowles, J. Gray, Matthew N Hill, R. Hunter, I. Karatsoreos, Carla Nasca. Nature Neuroscience, 2015

1,269 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The brain is the central organ involved in perceiving and adapting to social and physical stressors via multiple interacting mediators, from the cell surface to the cytoskeleton to epigenetic regulation and nongenomic mechanisms. A key result of stress is structural remodeling of neural architecture, which may be a sign of successful adaptation, whereas persistence of these changes when stress ends indicates failed resilience. Excitatory amino acids and glucocorticoids have key roles in these processes, along with a growing list of extra- and intracellular mediators that includes endocannabinoids and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). The result is a continually changing pattern of gene expression mediated by epigenetic mechanisms involving histone modifications and CpG methylation and hydroxymethylation as well as by the activity of retrotransposons that may alter genomic stability. Elucidation of the underlying mechanisms of plasticity and vulnerability of the brain provides a basis for understanding the efficacy of interventions for anxiety and depressive disorders as well as age-related cognitive decline.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/780c5642b775c6b95b8f11ac4ce982f0d4a2d772

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Citations in the corpus

The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization (2017, positive): “Prolonged imbalances can lead to illness (e.g. Hunter and McEwen, 2013; McEwen et al., 2015) that remodels the brain (Crossley et al., 2014; Goodkind et al., 2015) and the sympathetic nervous system, with corresponding behavior changes (Sloan et al., 2007; Capitanio and Cole, 2015; for a review,…”
Review on Psychological Stress Detection Using Biosignals (2019, background): “The stress mechanism begins in the brain and, although stress has widespread effects throughout the brain, three main brain regions, the hippocampus [8], the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex seem to have a critical involvement [9].”
Advancing the Science and Practice of Social and Emotional Learning (2016, background): “Advances in the biological sciences suggest that social and emotional skills are likely to have neurobiological and neuroendocrinal roots that are affected by children’s contexts (including epigenetically) and affect children’s expression of social and emotional skills (e.g., Blair & Raver, 2014; Mc”
Prenatal developmental origins of behavior and mental health: The influence of maternal stress in pregnancy. (2017, background): “which in turn may induce physical and mental health problems (McEwen et al., 2015).”
Altered connectivity in depression: GABA and glutamate neurotransmitter deficits and reversal by novel treatments (2019, background): “These studies show that exposure to chronic stress decreases dendrite length and branching of hippocampus CA3 pyramidal neurons and mPFC layers II/II and V pyramidal neurons (Duman et al., 2016; McEwen et al., 2015; McEwen and Morrison, 2013; Morrison and Baxter, 2012).”