Endogenous Reward Mechanisms and Their Importance in Stress Reduction, Exercise and the Brain
Open accessAbstract
Stress can facilitate disease processes and causes strain on the health care budgets. It is responsible or involved in many human ailments of our time, such as cardiovascular illnesses, particularly related to the psychosocial stressors of daily life, including work. Besides pharmacological or clinical medical treatment options, behavioral stress reduction is much-needed. These latter approaches rely on an endogenous healing potential via life-style modification. Hence, research has suggested different ways and approaches to self-treat stress or buffer against stressors and their impacts. These self-care-centred approaches are sometimes referred to as mind-body medicine or multi-factorial stress management strategies. They consist of various cognitive behavioral techniques, as well as relaxation exercises and nutritional counselling. However, a critical and consistent element of modern effective stress reduction strategies are exercise practices. With regard to underlying neurobiological mechanisms of stress relief, reward and motivation circuitries that are imbedded in the limbic regions of the brain are responsible for the autoregulatory and endogenous processing of stress. Exercise techniques clearly have an impact upon these systems. Thereby, physical activities have a potential to increase mood, i.e., decrease psychological distress by pleasure induction. For doing so, neurobiological signalling molecules such as endogenous morphine and coupled nitric oxide pathways get activated and finely tuned. Evolutionarily, the various activities and autoregulatory pathways are linked together, which can also be demonstrated by the fact that dopamine is endogenously converted into morphine which itself leads to enhanced nitric oxide release by activation of constitutive nitric oxide synthase enzymes. These molecules and mechanisms are clearly stress-reducing.
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Reductions in perceived stress correlate with decreases in right basolateral amygdala gray matter density.
“Neurobiological studies have identified the amygdala as a crucial brain region in stress responses, with research showing that reductions in perceived stress correlate with decreases in right basolateral amygdala gray matter density [4,5,6,7].”
From Comprehensive review of chronic stress pathways and the efficacy of behavioral stress reduction programs (BSRPs) in managing diseases. (2024) · cites this paper as [7]
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- Authors
- Esch, T., & Stefano, G. B.
- Affiliations
- Coburg University of Applied Sciences (DE)
- State University of New York (US)
- Corresponding author
- Esch, Tobias
- Venue
- Archives of Medical Science
- Publisher
- Termedia Sp. z.o.o.
- Published
- 2010
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 447-455
- ISSN
- 1734-1922 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3282525
- OpenAlex
- W2061705620
- Cited by
- 70
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 0.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- Archives of Medical Science (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neuropeptides and Animal Physiology
- Keywords
- stress reduction, physical activity, dopamine, endogenous morphine, nitric oxide, nitric oxide synthase, limbic system, mood improvement, psychosocial stress, cardiovascular disease, mind-body medicine, stress management
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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