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Brain-Body Pathways Linking Psychological Stress and Physical Health
Open accessAbstract
Psychological stress is thought to arise from appraisal processes that ascribe threat-related meaning to experiences that tax or exceed our coping ability. Neuroimaging research indicates that these appraisal processes originate in brain systems that also control physiological stress reactions in the body. Separate lines of research in health psychology and behavioral medicine indicate that these physiological stress reactions confer risk for physical disease. Accordingly, integrative research that cuts across historically separated disciplines may help to define the brain-body pathways linking psychological stress to physical health. We describe recent studies aimed at this goal, focusing on studies of the brain bases of stressor-evoked cardiovascular system reactions and heart disease risk. We also outline an interpretive framework for these studies, as well as needs for next-generation models and metrics to better understand how the brain encodes and embodies stress in relation to health.
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“We look at illness-promoting psychological processes that emerge in the minds of children with FND and that function—in a top-down fashion—to activate and modulate the stress system, thereby contributing to the activation or maintenance of the illness process [23,24,25,26,27].”
From Illness-Promoting Psychological Processes in Children and Adolescents with Functional Neurological Disorder (2023) · cites this paper as [25]
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“The child’s expectations will thus be reflected in her body, thoughts, and feelings and can potentially, through a range of mind–brain–body pathways, affect the course of her symptoms [24,25,27,38,39].”
From Illness-Promoting Psychological Processes in Children and Adolescents with Functional Neurological Disorder (2023) · cites this paper as [25]
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“Both the actual experience of social rejection and subsequent rejection-related thoughts and feelings function to activate neural networks that mediate the subjective experience of pain (>2/3 of the current cohort) [110,111,112] and stress-system activation (autonomic system component) [25], both of which are known to modulate aberrant neural network function in paediatric FND [39,113].”
From Illness-Promoting Psychological Processes in Children and Adolescents with Functional Neurological Disorder (2023) · cites this paper as [25]
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
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Metadata
- Authors
- Gianaros, P. J., & Wager, T. D.
- Affiliations
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- Venue
- Current Directions in Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2015-08
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 313-321
- ISSN
- 0963-7214 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-8721
- PMC
- PMC4535428
- OpenAlex
- W2220884112
- Cited by
- 290
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 34 · 2024: 33 · 2023: 34 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 25 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 11.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Current Directions in Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01HL089850)
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH076136, R37MH076136)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA035484)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine › Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Keywords
- psychological stress, stress appraisal, physiological stress response, cardiovascular reactivity, heart disease risk
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