ScienceDaily: Social trauma impairs brain reward function

Past social trauma is encoded by a population of stress/threat-responsive brain cells that become hyperactivated during subsequent interaction with non-threatening social targets. As a consequence, previously rewarding social targets are now perceived as social threats, which promotes generalized social avoidance and impaired social reward processing that can contribute to psychiatric disorders, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Brain and Body Research Center at Mount Sinai and published November 30 in Nature.

In humans, studies have shown that social trauma impairs brain reward function to the extent that social interaction is no longer rewarding, leading to severe social avoidance. In rodents, chronic social defeat stress, a model of social trauma, has been used to understand the brain circuit mechanisms underlying stress susceptibility versus resilience, yet little is known regarding its impact on social reward. Previous studies have assessed social interaction with an adult mouse similar to those used as aggressors to induce the social trauma. Social avoidance under these circumstances likely reflects fear or submissive behavior, rather than altered social reward.

"To better understand how traumatic social experience affects social reward, we tested social interaction and social preference with a same-sex juvenile mouse that, under control conditions, is rewarding," said Long Li, PhD, Instructor of Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and lead author of the study. "We found that, following chronic social defeat stress, a subset of male and female mice termed susceptible avoid social interactions with juvenile mice and do not develop context-dependent social reward following encounters with them."

Some Insights From This Article

• Research shows social trauma can inhibit areas of our brain that are responsible for feelings of social reward and facilitating social interactions. In a sort of the same as avoidance learning our brain will learn to avoid anything that has caused yourself harm in the past.

• This can make it very difficult for people who had experienced previous social trauma to re-enter and find joy in subsequent social interaction. The social reward and capability of social interaction are neurologically inhibited.

• This can also be caused by chronic stress from social interactions as well. Repeated negative social experiences can condition our brain to prefer social avoidance over interaction.

What are some ways you overcome social avoidance?

Full article is here!

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