Say you’re the target of workplace bullying or your spouse verbal abuses you (which may be a mate retention strategy, here). What does that do to your brain?
Five selected references, single line summary, (oversimplified and mostly in rodent models) and some editorial remarks:
Increased phasic dopamine signaling in the mesolimbic pathway during social defeat in rats.
Social defeat makes some of your striatal neurons have a hair trigger, indicating (to me) the propensity for overreaction.
Social defeat leaves a long lasting imprint on your brain physiology, indicating (again, to me) there are systems in place for preventing plasticity. I think there’s an immune system aspect in here somewhere, because both the immune system and the neural system deal with long term “memory” formation at the cellular level, relating to experience.
You get by with a little help from your friends. (At least if you’re a mouse). Social support tamps down on stress-induced hair – trigger synapse firing, indicating (to me, sigh) perhaps the oxytocin or vasopressin (affiliative) systems override the stress-induced hair-trigger synaptic firing.
After social aggression, your have more stress-related brain receptors, indicating a higher responsiveness to stress hormones (like, corticoids).
Catecholaminergic input to the oxytocin neurosecretory system in the human hypothalamus.
Stress seems to be anti-matter to enzymes that break down anti-stress molecules (like oxytocin). Oxytocin, the feel good chemical, floats around until there’s too much of it and it’s eaten up by evil anti-oxytocin enzymes. (And yes, this explanation is totally scientific, the enzymes wear Dearth Vader gas masks). Evil anti-oxytocin enzymes normally float around in the aqueous part of your brain tissues. But, stress puts a stop to that. The evil oxytocin eating enzymes turn hydrophobic and get swamped in the cell membranes.
This makes sense, you don’t want enzymes breaking down anti-stress hormones when you’re stressed. (The counter argument: No, Swivelchair, oxytocin isn’t anti-stress. It makes you more stressed. Oxytocin leads to aggressive behavior. You recognize faces, you notice people more, not necessarily feeling happy. So when you’re stressed, you need to be on the double high alert. So this in fact makes you more stressed because now you are doomed to attack the person in the next cube who is stressing you out and they will probably call security, and you will be put walked out with the security guards and then be labeled forever as a trouble maker. That leads to higher stress. It is much better to be catatonic when stressed, because then you can ignore big problems. And if you ignore then they go away.) There. Equal time rule.
Enough of this nonsense. Exactly how does all this mumbo jumbo benefit me?
How about a new kind of happy-pill-target: an enzyme antagonist (is that the right word? Reverse agonist?) Anti-anti-oxytocin. (Compare: “bread maker maker“.)
Something that the enymes will bind to selectively, to keep the enzymes from chewing up the “feel good” molecules like oxytocin or vasopressin. Preferably “Oxy-Guard XL – extended release tabs” – released in a sustained form, like in little tiny time pills. (Branding departments, thank me later).
[...] Five Things Social Defeat Does to Your Brain It’s not [...]