Main description:

This textbook provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of stress, helping students and professionals understand the main neurobiological and psychological causes and consequences of stress in human beings. It's aimed at understanding the concept of stress at different levels, from the impact of environmental stressors to its processing in the brain, and from the neural mechanisms involved in this processing to the expression of different adaptive responses. All these neural mechanisms are clearly explained according to different levels of complexity, from the neurobiological level, including the cellular and molecular mechanisms, to the psychological level, including the cognitive and emotional processing, and behavioral expressions.

The whole content is described in a very comprehensive manner, accompanied with descriptive graphics to clearly illustrate every detail, therefore allowing a full integration of all the covered concepts. In addition, clinical expressions of stress, such as mood and anxiety disorders, are also covered in detail, including an overview of different factors of vulnerability and resilience, therefore providing a unique and fundamental insight of this interdisciplinary field.

Given its interdisciplinary approach, Neuroscience of Stress: From Neurobiology to Cognitive, Emotional and Behavioral Sciences will provide a comprehensive and clear introduction to the study of stress to students and professionals from different fields of the behavioral and health sciences. It will serve as a valuable text for adoption in classes of a wide range of graduate courses dealing with mental health and well-being, in areas such as health and clinical psychology, health promotion and disease prevention, psychiatry and behavioral medicine, among others.

Contents:

Chapter 1: Stress: Historical perspective and evolution of the concept

Stress in daily life: stressors and adaptive responses

The good and the bad: eustress, distress and learned helplessness

Acute and chronic stress: the road map to trauma or resilience

Chronic stress and disease: homeostasis, allostasis, and allostatic load

Chapter 2: Neurobiological approach to stress

Stress from the environment to the brain

Neural structures and neurotransmitters involved in adaptive responses to stress

Psychoneurobiology of the limbic system: amygdala and hippocampus

Neurocircuitry and psychoneurobiology of the prefrontal cortex

The raphe nuclei and the serotonergic system

The reward system and dopaminergic pathways

The locus coeruleus and the noradrenergic system

Activation and regulation of the sympatho-adrenergic system

The role of neurotrophic factors: neuroplasticity and neurogenesis

Brief introduction to molecular genetics and transcriptional regulation

Regulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis

Molecular biology of the HPA axis: hormones and receptors

Chapter 3: Psychological approach to stress

Environmental stressors: perception and working memory

Cognitive processing of stress: appraisal and coping

The role of cognitive and emotional resources

Stress, trauma and resilience: cognition and emotion

Developing controllability: the road map to resilience

Stress in early periods of life: vunerability or controllability

Chapter 4: Clinical approach to stress:

The role of stress in the development of fear and anxiety

Stress, anxiety and the development of anxiety disorders

The psychoneurobiological bases of fear and anxiety

The amygdala and the fear circuit in the brain

Neurobiology of innate fear programming

Neurobiology of fear conditioning

The role of the amygdala and the BNST in the regulation of the HPA axis

The role of the hypothalamic PVN in the regulation of the HPA axis

The role of the amygdala and the hypothalamus in the regulation of the ANS

The role of the Locus Coeruleus and the noradrenergic system in stress

The role of the Raphe Nuclei and the Serotonergic system in Stress

The role of the reward pathway and the Dopaminergic system in Stress

The role of stress in the development of depression

Genetic Vulnerability: the role of polymorphisms

Inflammatory processes: the role of cytokines

Psychological vulnerability: Stress, appraisal and coping

Stress in early periods of life and its long term effects

Neurobiological circuits of vulnerability and resilience

Chapter 5: Integrative approach to stress

Cognitive and neurobiological integration of stress and resilience

Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology: the "Roseta Stone" of stress