2021 journal article
Convergent neuroendocrine mechanisms of social buffering and stress contagion
Hormones and Behavior, 129, 104933.
TL;DR:
The extent to which the neuropeptides corticotropin releasing hormone and oxytocin are involved in contagion and stress buffering is considered and the importance that frontal cortical areas such as the anterior cingulate cortex and infralimbic cortex play is assessed.
(via Semantic Scholar)
open access via pure.rug.nl (repository)
Source: ORCID
Added: January 28, 2024
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.