Bullying Triggers Strong Emotional And Threat Responses In The Brain

In a collaboration betwixt Turun yliopisto and nan University of Turku, researchers led by Birgitta Paranko and Lauri Nummenmaa explored nan contiguous effects of bullying connected nan brain. 

As reported successful their JNeurosci paper, nan researchers measured neural and attentional responses while tweens (aged 11 to 14) and adults watched first-person videos of either group being bullied aliases much affirmative societal interactions. For participants of each ages, bullying triggered distressful siren states, activating societal and affectional encephalon networks arsenic good arsenic autonomic threat consequence systems. Measuring eye-tracking responses and pupil sizes successful a abstracted group of adults during video viewing supported these findings, showing stronger affectional and attentional responses to bullying than different societal interactions. The researchers besides discovered that these neural responses and siren states were linked to viewers having erstwhile real-life experiences being victims of bullying. 

In sum, says Nummenmaa, "We mapped distress pathways successful nan encephalon that whitethorn beryllium promptly engaged erstwhile personification gets bullied, and showed that nan continuous siren authorities is hazardous for some intelligence and somatic wellness owed to nan accrued autonomic activation."