Stress und die Selbstorganisation verhaltenssteuernder neuronaler Netzwerke

Abstract

Psychosocial conflict is the major cause of emotional arousal and the activation of the neuroendocrine stress response. The higher associative brain structures are not only the sites in which psychosocial demands are recognized and from which a less or more systemic, i.e. controllable or uncontrollable stress response is initiated. They are also the sites which are structually modified in the course of this response: Controllable stress leads to the stabilization and facilitation of those neuronal pathways and synaptic connections which are activated in the coping process, uncontrollable stress favours the destabilization of established associative networks as a prerequisite for their subsequent reorganization. The stress response acts therefore as a trigger for the adaptive, experience-dependent adjustment of neuronal connectivity to the actual, i.e. individually perceived, demands of the external, psychosocial world.