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Updated: Jun 23, 2026

Social Threat-Safety Test Uncovers Psychosocial Stress-Related Phenotypes
Published on: December 15, 2023
Psychobiology and molecular genetics of resilience
Adriana Feder1, Eric J Nestler, Dennis S Charney
1Department of Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York 10029, USA. adriana.feder@mssm.edu
Abstract:
Every individual experiences stressful life events. In some cases acute or chronic stress leads to depression and other psychiatric disorders, but most people are resilient to such effects. Recent research has begun to identify the environmental, genetic, epigenetic and neural mechanisms that underlie resilience, and has shown that resilience is mediated by adaptive changes in several neural circuits involving numerous neurotransmitter and molecular pathways. These changes shape the functioning of the neural circuits that regulate reward, fear, emotion reactivity and social behaviour, which together are thought to mediate successful coping with stress.
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