Adapting to Stress: Understanding the Neurobiology of Resilience

Abstract

There is significant variation in the way individuals react and respond to extreme stress and adversity. While some individuals develop psychiatric conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder or major depressive disorder, others recover from stressful experiences without displaying significant symptoms of psychological ill-health, demonstrating stress-resilience. To understand why some individuals exhibit characteristics of a resilient profile, the interplay between neurochemical, genetic, and epigenetic processes over time needs to be explained. In this review, we examine the hormones, neuropeptides, neurotransmitters, and neural circuits associated with resilience and vulnerability to stress-related disorders. We debate how this increasing body of knowledge could also be useful in the creation of a stress-resilient profile. Additionally, identification of the underlying neurobiological components related to resilience may offer a contribution to improved approaches toward the prevention and treatment of stress-related disorders.

Fear response-based prediction for stress susceptibility to PTSD-like phenotypes

“…Despite the similarity, however, resilient mice exhibited signi cantly reduced fear generalization with decreased freezing during fear extinction and fear recall after memory extinction. Taken together, these data support the idea that the reduced PTSD phenomena in resilient mice speci cally results from their capability to overcome the effects of traumatic stresses, but would not be attributable to differences in how the stress was experienced, how the stress memory was formed, or in the ability to retrieve the stress memory [34,35].…”

Behavioral Traits Associated With Resilience to the Effects of Repeated Social Defeat on Cocaine-Induced Conditioned Place Preference in Mice

“…Thus, resilience can be defined as ''the process of adapting well in the face of adversity'' (Charney, 2004), or as the capacity to overcome the deleterious consequences of stress, which result in the development of psychiatric disorders in more vulnerable individuals. It is unclear why some individuals are more resilient to the impairing effects of stress than others, but neurochemical, genetic, and epigenetic processes seem to be associated with resilience to stress-related disorders (Cadet, 2016;Osório et al, 2016).…”

Associations between changes in resilient coping and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms

“…Because PTSD is associated with substantial psychological and societal burden, researchers are investigating genetic, epigenetic, neurochemical, and psychosocial correlates of this condition (Banerjee, Morrison, & Ressler, 2017; Faye, McGowan, Denny, & David, 2017; Feder et al, 2016; Horn et al, 2016; Osorio, Probert, Jones, Young, & Robbins, 2017; Zang et al, 2017). It is noteworthy that many individuals with a history of traumatic experiences do not develop PTSD (Kessler et al, 2017).…”