Peen Natanja F, Duque-Wilckens Natalia, Trainor Brian C
Department of Neurobiology, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES), University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands; Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA. USA.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA. USA; Departments of Physiology and Large Animal Clinical Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. USA.
Horm Behav. 2021 Mar;129:104933. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2021.104933. Epub 2021 Jan 20.
Social interactions play a key role in modulating the impact of stressful experiences. In some cases, social interactions can result in social buffering, the process in which the presence of one individual reduces the physiological and behavioral impact of stress in another individual. On the other hand, there is growing evidence that a key initiating factor of social buffering behaviors is the initiation of an anxiogenic state in the individual that was not directly exposed to the stress. This is referred to as stress contagion (a form of emotion contagion). Both processes involve the transmission of social information, suggesting that contagion and buffering could share similar neural mechanisms. In general, mechanistic studies of contagion and buffering are considered separately, even though behavioral studies show that a degree of contagion is usually necessary for social buffering behaviors to occur. Here we consider the extent to which the neuropeptides corticotropin releasing hormone and oxytocin are involved in contagion and stress buffering. We also assess the importance that frontal cortical areas such as the anterior cingulate cortex and infralimbic cortex play in these behavioral processes. We suggest that further work that directly compares neural mechanisms during stress contagion and stress buffering will be important for identifying what appear to be distinct but overlapping circuits mediating these processes.
社交互动在调节压力体验的影响方面起着关键作用。在某些情况下，社交互动会导致社交缓冲，即一个个体的存在减轻另一个个体压力的生理和行为影响的过程。另一方面，越来越多的证据表明，社交缓冲行为的一个关键起始因素是未直接暴露于压力的个体产生焦虑状态。这被称为压力传染（一种情绪传染形式）。这两个过程都涉及社会信息的传递，表明传染和缓冲可能共享相似的神经机制。一般来说，传染和缓冲的机制研究是分开进行的，尽管行为研究表明，一定程度的传染通常是社交缓冲行为发生所必需的。在这里，我们考虑神经肽促肾上腺皮质激素释放激素和催产素在传染和压力缓冲中的参与程度。我们还评估前额叶皮质区域，如前扣带回皮质和边缘下皮质在这些行为过程中所起的重要作用。我们认为，直接比较压力传染和压力缓冲过程中的神经机制的进一步研究，对于识别介导这些过程的看似不同但重叠的回路将具有重要意义。
