Hostinar Camelia E, Sullivan Regina M, Gunnar Megan R
Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota.
Emotional Brain Institute, Nathan S. Kline Institute, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University Langone Medical Center.
Psychol Bull. 2014 Jan;140(1):256-82. doi: 10.1037/a0032671. Epub 2013 Apr 22.
Discovering the stress-buffering effects of social relationships has been one of the major findings in psychobiology in the last century. However, an understanding of the underlying neurobiological and psychological mechanisms of this buffering is only beginning to emerge. An important avenue of this research concerns the neurocircuitry that can regulate the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. The present review is a translational effort aimed at integrating animal models and human studies of the social regulation of the HPA axis from infancy to adulthood, specifically focusing on the process that has been named social buffering. This process has been noted across species and consists of a dampened HPA axis stress response to threat or challenge that occurs with the presence or assistance of a conspecific. We describe aspects of the relevant underlying neurobiology when enough information exists and expose major gaps in our understanding across all domains of the literatures we aimed to integrate. We provide a working conceptual model focused on the role of oxytocinergic systems and prefrontal neural networks as 2 of the putative biological mediators of this process, and propose that the role of early experiences is critical in shaping later social buffering effects. This synthesis points to both general future directions and specific experiments that need to be conducted to build a more comprehensive model of the HPA social buffering effect across the life span that incorporates multiple levels of analysis: neuroendocrine, behavioral, and social.
发现社会关系的压力缓冲效应是上个世纪心理生物学的主要研究成果之一。然而，对于这种缓冲作用背后的神经生物学和心理学机制的理解才刚刚开始浮现。这项研究的一个重要途径涉及能够调节下丘脑 - 垂体 - 肾上腺皮质（HPA）轴活动的神经回路。本综述旨在进行转化研究，整合从婴儿期到成年期HPA轴社会调节的动物模型和人类研究，特别关注被称为社会缓冲的过程。这个过程在不同物种中都有发现，包括在同种个体存在或协助下，HPA轴对威胁或挑战的应激反应减弱。当有足够信息时，我们描述相关潜在神经生物学的各个方面，并揭示我们在所整合文献的所有领域理解上的主要差距。我们提供一个实用的概念模型，重点关注催产素能系统和前额叶神经网络作为这一过程的两种假定生物学介质的作用，并提出早期经历在塑造后期社会缓冲效应方面的作用至关重要。这种综合研究既指出了未来的总体方向，也指出了需要进行的具体实验，以建立一个更全面的涵盖整个生命周期的HPA社会缓冲效应模型，该模型包含多个分析层面：神经内分泌、行为和社会层面。
