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Neural mechanisms of social risk for psychiatric disorders

Nature Neuroscience volume 15, pages 663–668 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Mental health and social life are intimately inter-related, as demonstrated by the frequent social deficits of psychiatric patients and the increased rate of psychiatric disorders in people exposed to social environmental adversity. Here, we review emerging evidence that combines epidemiology, social psychology and neuroscience to bring neural mechanisms of social risk factors for mental illness into focus. In doing so, we discuss existing evidence on the effects of common genetic risk factors in social neural pathways and outline the need for integrative approaches to identify the converging mechanisms of social environmental and genetic risk in brain.

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Figure 1: A simplified taxonomy of neural areas supporting human social functions, shown on lateral and medial surfaces (top and bottom, respectively).
Figure 2: Genetic and social environmental risk factors for mental illness converge on higher order regulatory modules of the human social-emotional processing network.

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Acknowledgements

A.M.-L. gratefully acknowledges grant support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 636, KFO 256), German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF NGFN-MooDs, Bernstein-Programm funding number 01GQ1003B) and European Union (NEWMEDS, OPTIMIZE, EU-GEI, EU-AIMS) during the preparation of this manuscript. H.T. gratefully acknowledges grant support by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF 01GQ1102).

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  1. Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany

    Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg & Heike Tost

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Correspondence to Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg or Heike Tost.

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Meyer-Lindenberg, A., Tost, H. Neural mechanisms of social risk for psychiatric disorders. Nat Neurosci 15, 663–668 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3083

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