Neural mechanisms of social risk for psychiatric disorders

• Published in: Nature neuroscience Vol. 15; no. 5; pp. 663 - 668
• Main Authors: Meyer-Lindenberg, Andreas, Tost, Heike
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Nature Publishing Group US 01-05-2012; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/208/2489/144; 631/378/2645; 692/699/476; Animal Genetics and Genomics; Autism; Behavioral Sciences; Biological Techniques; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Brain - pathology; Brain Mapping; Brain research; Calcium Channels - genetics; Emotions; Emotions - physiology; Epidemiology; Fear & phobias; Gene-Environment Interaction; Health risk assessment; Humans; Hypothalamus; Mental disorders; Mental Disorders - epidemiology; Mental Disorders - genetics; Mental Disorders - pathology; Mental Disorders - psychology; Mental health; Mental illness; Neurobiology; Neurosciences; perspective; Receptors, Oxytocin - genetics; Risk Factors; Schizophrenia; Social aspects; Social Behavior; Social life & customs; Social psychology; Germany
• ISSN: 1097-6256; 1546-1726
• DOI: 10.1038/nn.3083

This review discusses how social factors modulate risks for mental disorders, and the neural systems that implement this modulation.
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.