Project Details
Projekt
FOR 751: The Science of Social Stress (SOSS): Understanding the Interaction of Mind, Brain and Culture in the Response and Adaptation to Stress
Subject Area
Social and Behavioural Sciences
Medicine
Medicine
Term
from 2006 to 2013
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 23057254
Modern societies imply continuous demands for the adaptation of human beings to a stream of social stressors. New types of socially enthused allostatic load range from information intake to insecurity, and even anxiety and traumatic stress, resulting from new wars or terrorism. Chronic or massive stress changes mind, brain structure and functioning, including memory systems, with consequent changes of the dynamic interaction of individuals with their cultural environment, including adaptation to social stress. The collective and long-term effects of stressors, even if transient, may be changing the brain's processing modes and thereby may be resulting in characteristic psychological, behavioural, and physiological responses that can be considered as "maladaptation" to environmental conditions.
It is the goal of the Research Unit to model this dynamic interface between social stressors, mind, brain, and body. Adopting the perspective of biosocial co-constructivism with its plastic adaptation as impulse for a new paradigmatic development, we investigate, how social, including traumatic stressors and related learning conditions shape the structure and function of the interwoven human soft- and hardware, i.e., mind and brain/body, in their adaptation to sociocultural conditions. As an interdisciplinary research initiative, concepts, methods and own previous research on functional brain plasticity and psychoneuroimmunology will be combined with those of affective neuroscience, whereby we conceptualise emotions as action dispositions.
Within this general framework, the multidisciplinary projects address basic aspects such as neural processing of affective stimuli, memory-related storage of stressful experiences including models of a fear network, neuroendocrine and immunological alterations in response to experimental social stress. Stress effects on immunological factors are investigated in animal models. In addition, the social challenges including traumatic stress on theses parameters are studied in real-world settings. From another perspective a second set of projects exploits psychiatric and psychological disorders (like posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, schizophrenia etc.) as model to study the dynamics of maladaptive response patterns (cortical, endocrine, immunological, affective) under conditions of high allostatic load, past and present. The dynamics of adaptive patterns to social stress in finally studied through the investigation of changes induced by therapeutic intervention.
It is the goal of the Research Unit to model this dynamic interface between social stressors, mind, brain, and body. Adopting the perspective of biosocial co-constructivism with its plastic adaptation as impulse for a new paradigmatic development, we investigate, how social, including traumatic stressors and related learning conditions shape the structure and function of the interwoven human soft- and hardware, i.e., mind and brain/body, in their adaptation to sociocultural conditions. As an interdisciplinary research initiative, concepts, methods and own previous research on functional brain plasticity and psychoneuroimmunology will be combined with those of affective neuroscience, whereby we conceptualise emotions as action dispositions.
Within this general framework, the multidisciplinary projects address basic aspects such as neural processing of affective stimuli, memory-related storage of stressful experiences including models of a fear network, neuroendocrine and immunological alterations in response to experimental social stress. Stress effects on immunological factors are investigated in animal models. In addition, the social challenges including traumatic stress on theses parameters are studied in real-world settings. From another perspective a second set of projects exploits psychiatric and psychological disorders (like posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, schizophrenia etc.) as model to study the dynamics of maladaptive response patterns (cortical, endocrine, immunological, affective) under conditions of high allostatic load, past and present. The dynamics of adaptive patterns to social stress in finally studied through the investigation of changes induced by therapeutic intervention.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Projects
- Central Tasks of all Projects of the Research Unit (Applicant Elbert, Thomas )
- Change of Neural Network Indicators through Narrative Treatment of PTSD in Torture Victims (Applicant Neuner, Frank )
- Molecular regulation and functional efficacy of T cell responses in a mouse model of social stress and patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Applicants Engler, Harald ; Groettrup, Marcus )
- Neural Network Architecture in Respnse to Traumatic Stress: Psychophysiology of the Defence Cascade and Implications for PTSD and Dissociative Disorders (Applicant Elbert, Thomas )
- Psychosocial Stress and Memory Control (Applicant Kißler, Johanna )
- Reacting to the Unpleasant: Dynamics of the Human Defence Cascade (Applicant Keil, Andreas )
- Social Stress, Allostatic Load and Psychopathology (Applicant Rockstroh, Brigitte )
- Social Stress Effects on Emotional Perception an Associative Learning (Applicants Junghöfer, Markus ; Schupp, Harald )
- Stress by acute inflammation in humans: Effects on brain activity, neuropsychological performance and social behavior (Applicant Schedlowski, Manfred )
Spokesperson
Professor Dr. Thomas Elbert
