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Environmental influence in the brain, human welfare and mental health

Nature Neuroscience volume 18, pages 1421–1431 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

The developing human brain is shaped by environmental exposures—for better or worse. Many exposures relevant to mental health are genuinely social in nature or believed to have social subcomponents, even those related to more complex societal or area-level influences. The nature of how these social experiences are embedded into the environment may be crucial. Here we review select neuroscience evidence on the neural correlates of adverse and protective social exposures in their environmental context, focusing on human neuroimaging data and supporting cellular and molecular studies in laboratory animals. We also propose the inclusion of innovative methods in social neuroscience research that may provide new and ecologically more valid insight into the social-environmental risk architecture of the human brain.

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Figure 1: Neural correlates of ethnic minority status.
Figure 2: Neural correlates of urban life.
Figure 3: Ecologically enhanced methods for social neuroscience.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank E. Bilek, T. Törnros and M. Reichert for help with the figures and U. Reininghaus for epidemiological input. H.T. gratefully acknowledges grant support by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF (01GQ1102). A.M.-L. acknowledges funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme under the grant agreements HEALTH-F2-2010-241909 (EU-GEI), 115300 (EU-AIMS) and 602805 (EU-Aggressotype).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, University of Heidelberg, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Heike Tost & Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg

  2. Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

    Frances A Champagne

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Correspondence to Heike Tost.

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Competing interests

A.M.-L. has received consultant fees and travel expenses from Alexza Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Defined Health, Decision Resources, Desitin Arzneimittel, Elsevier, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Gerson Lehrman Group, Grupo Ferrer, Les Laboratoires Servier, Lilly Deutschland, Lundbeck Foundation, Outcome Sciences, Outcome Europe, PriceSpective and Roche Pharma and has received speaker's fees from Abbott, AstraZeneca, BASF, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen-Cilag, Lundbeck, Pfizer Pharma and Servier Deutschland.

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Tost, H., Champagne, F. & Meyer-Lindenberg, A. Environmental influence in the brain, human welfare and mental health. Nat Neurosci 18, 1421–1431 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4108

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