University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Dartmouth University, Hanover, NH, USA.
Curr Top Behav Neurosci. 2022;54:373-392. doi: 10.1007/7854_2021_281.
As humans, we face a variety of social stressors on a regular basis. Given the established role of social stress in influencing physical and psychological functioning, researchers have focused immense efforts on understanding the psychological and physiological changes induced by exposure to acute social stressors. With the advancement of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), more recent work has sought to identify the neural correlates of processing acute social stress. In this review, we provide an overview of research on the neural underpinnings of social stress processing to date. Specifically, we summarize research that has examined the neural underpinnings of three types of social stressors commonly studied in the literature: social rejection, social evaluation, and racism-related stress. Within our discussion of each type of social stressor, we describe the methods used to induce stress, the brain regions commonly activated among studies investigating that type of stress, and recommendations for future work. This review of the current literature identifies activity in midline regions in both prefrontal and parietal cortices, as well as lateral prefrontal regions, as being associated with processing social rejection. Activity in the insula, thalamus, and inferior frontal gyrus is often found in studies using social evaluation tasks. Finally, racism-related stress is associated with activity in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and rostral anterior cingulate cortex. We conclude by taking a "30,000-foot view" of this area of research to provide suggestions for the future of research on the neuroscience of social stress.
作为人类，我们经常面临各种社会压力。鉴于社会压力在影响生理和心理功能方面的既定作用，研究人员已经投入大量精力来理解暴露于急性社会压力源所引起的心理和生理变化。随着功能磁共振成像（fMRI）的进步，最近的研究工作试图确定处理急性社会压力的神经相关性。在这篇综述中，我们概述了迄今为止关于社会压力处理的神经基础的研究。具体来说，我们总结了研究三种常见的社会压力源的神经基础的研究：社会排斥、社会评价和与种族主义相关的压力。在讨论每种类型的社会压力源时，我们描述了用于诱发压力的方法、研究该类型压力时常见的激活脑区以及对未来工作的建议。对当前文献的综述确定了中线上皮区域以及外侧前额叶区域与处理社会排斥有关的活动。在使用社会评价任务的研究中，通常会发现岛叶、丘脑和下额回的活动。最后，与种族主义相关的压力与腹外侧前额叶皮层和前扣带皮层的活动有关。我们最后从这个研究领域的“高视角”来看待这个问题，为社会压力神经科学的未来研究提供建议。
