Home » Psychology news » Heightened activity of specific brain cells following traumatic social experience blocks social reward and promotes sustained social avoidance
Heightened activity of specific brain cells following traumatic social experience blocks social reward and promotes sustained social avoidance
November 30, 2022 by NewsBot
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.