The brain is the central organ of stress and adaptation

Experience tells us that the social and physical environments in which people live and work have a huge effect upon psychological states. The nature of these environments also affects physical and mental health and risk for disease. Yet the scientific study of this important topic has been frustrated and fragmented by disciplinary boundaries between such fields as environmental toxicology, social psychology, sociology, health psychology, economics, epidemiology, psychiatry and medicine. As a result, only some of the considerable knowledge has penetrated, albeit inconsistently, into the mainline of medical teaching and practice, and neuroscience has been largely out of the picture until recently. As a result, a coherent conceptual framework has been missing, because the brain has not been fully recognized as playing a central role in physiological adaptation and the effects of stress, as well as being a target of stress and related behaviors (McEwen, 2007).

[1]  B. McEwen.  Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators: central role of the brain , 2006, Dialogues in clinical neuroscience.

[2]  Catherine R. Harrison,et al.  Ageing, fitness and neurocognitive function , 1999, Nature.

[3]  Jens C. Pruessner,et al.  Self-esteem, locus of control, hippocampal volume, and cortisol regulation in young and old adulthood , 2005, NeuroImage.

[4]  E. Cadenas,et al.  Physiology and Neurobiology of Stress and Adaptation: Central Role of the Brain , 2007 .

[5]  S. Rauch,et al.  Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness , 2005, Neuroreport.

[6]  Peter J. Gianaros,et al.  Prospective reports of chronic life stress predict decreased grey matter volume in the hippocampus , 2007, NeuroImage.

[7]  Hugo D. Critchley,et al.  Perigenual anterior cingulate morphology covaries with perceived social standing , 2007, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[8]  B. McEwen.  Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. , 1998, The New England journal of medicine.

[9]  C. Liston,et al.  Psychosocial stress reversibly disrupts prefrontal processing and attentional control , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[10]  E. Phelps,et al.  Social learning of fear , 2007, Nature Neuroscience.

[11]  A. Convit,et al.  Hippocampal damage and memory impairments as possible early brain complications of type 2 diabetes , 2007, Diabetologia.

[12]  Ivan Toni,et al.  Increase in prefrontal cortical volume following cognitive behavioural therapy in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. , 2008, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[13]  K. Matthews,et al.  Potential neural embedding of parental social standing. , 2008, Social cognitive and affective neuroscience.

[14]  Peter J Gianaros,et al.  Heightened Functional Neural Activation to Psychological Stress Covaries With Exaggerated Blood Pressure Reactivity , 2007, Hypertension.

[15]  Arthur F. Kramer,et al.  Neurocognitive aging and cardiovascular fitness , 2007, Journal of Molecular Neuroscience.

[16]  J. Wingfield,et al.  The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine , 2003, Hormones and Behavior.

[17]  Kwangwook Cho,et al.  Chronic 'jet lag' produces temporal lobe atrophy and spatial cognitive deficits , 2001, Nature Neuroscience.

[18]  Y. Sheline.  Neuroimaging studies of mood disorder effects on the brain , 2003, Biological Psychiatry.

[19]  Ahmad R. Hariri,et al.  Individual Differences in Stressor-Evoked Blood Pressure Reactivity Vary with Activation, Volume, and Functional Connectivity of the Amygdala , 2008, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[20]  Ahmad R. Hariri,et al.  Interleukin-6 Covaries Inversely with Hippocampal Grey Matter Volume in Middle-Aged Adults , 2008, Biological Psychiatry.

[21]  E. McAuley,et al.  Aerobic fitness is associated with hippocampal volume in elderly humans , 2009, Hippocampus.

[22]  Ahmad R. Hariri,et al.  Preclinical Atherosclerosis Covaries with Individual Differences in Reactivity and Functional Connectivity of the Amygdala , 2009, Biological Psychiatry.

[23]  M. Raichle,et al.  Subgenual prefrontal cortex abnormalities in mood disorders , 1997, Nature.

[24]  M E Phelps,et al.  Systematic changes in cerebral glucose metabolic rate after successful behavior modification treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. , 1996, Archives of general psychiatry.