Elsevier

Brain Research

Volume 1355, 8 October 2010, Pages 52-60
Brain Research

Research Report
Role of the medial prefrontal cortex in coping and resilience

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2010.08.039Get rights and content

Abstract

The degree of behavioral control that an organism has over an aversive event is well known to modulate the behavioral and neurochemical consequences of exposure to the event. Here we review recent research that suggests that the experience of control over a potent stressor alters how the organism responds to future aversive events as well as to the stressor being controlled. More specifically, subjects that have experienced control show blunted behavioral and neurochemical responses to subsequent stressors occurring days to months later. Indeed, these subjects respond as if a later uncontrollable stressor is actually controllable. Further, we review research indicating that the stress resistance induced by control depends on control-induced activation of ventral medial prefrontal cortical (vmPFC) inhibitory control over brainstem and limbic structures. Furthermore, there appears to be plasticity in these circuits such that the experience of control alters the vmPFC in such a way that later uncontrollable stressors now activate the vmPFC circuitry, leading to inhibition of stress-responsive limbic and brainstem structures, i.e., stressor resistance. This controllability-induced proactive stressor resistance generalizes across very different stressors and may be involved in determining individual difference in reactions to traumatic events.

Section snippets

Stressor controllability

It has been known for many years that potent uncontrollable stressors such as IS produce a constellation of behavioral changes that persist for a number of days following IS. Thus, rats exposed to IS later fail to learn to escape in a different apparatus such as a shuttle box, are less active in the presence of aversive stimuli, are less aggressive and less dominant, are less interactive socially with both adult and juvenile conspecifics, eat and drink less, are neophobic, etc (Maier and

The proactive influence of control over a stressor

As noted above, the experience of potent stressors alters how the organism reacts to subsequent stressors. The issues to be explored here are whether, and by what mechanism(s), the behavioral controllability of the initial stressor alters reactions to subsequent stressors. The recent work from our laboratory directed at these questions derives from older reports indicating that a session of ES prevented a later exposure to IS from producing shuttle box escape deficits (Seligman and Maier, 1967

Safety signal and the sensory insular cortex

To this point the focus has been on behavioral control as an environmental variable that modulates how the occurrence of an aversive event alters the contemporaneous and future impacts of the event. However, control is not the only experiential variable that modulates the consequences of stressors, and it is important to inquire whether the mPFC mediates their effects as well. There has been considerable recent interest in “safety signals” (SSs) as stress modulators. SSs refer to stimuli that

Conclusions

Numerous studies have documented that how individuals are affected by aversive events is determined not just by the physical characteristics of the stimuli, but also by complex cognitive factors having to do with how the events are appraised and what type of coping is possible. Stressor controllability studies fit within this general framework. The research reviewed here has highlighted the role of the vmPFC in mediating the effects of control. Aversive stimulation activates a number of

Acknowledgments

The preparation of the article was supported by NIH grant MH50479.

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    A publisher's error resulted in this article not appearing in the Special Issue: Stress, Coping, and Disease. The article is presented here for the reader's convenience and for the continuity of the special issue: Stress, Coping, and Disease, Brain Research 1293, October 1, 2009.

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