Dopamine & Serotonin’s Role in Emotional Word Processing – Backed by Science

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09083-y

From the linked article:

Landmark study reveals cell-level brain changes tied to PTSD

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) isn’t caused by just one faulty switch in the brain; it’s more like a tangled orchestra of genes and cells thrown off-key by trauma. With many genetic players involved, scientists are still piecing together the full score.

Now, researchers at Yale University are tuning in at the single-cell level, examining how the brain’s wiring might be misfiring in PTSD. By studying individual brain cells, they hope to catch where the communication goes awry and uncover how trauma changes the mind from the inside out.

In this first-of-its-kind study, researchers zoomed in on PTSD at the single-cell level to better understand how it affects the brain. Since there are no drugs made specifically for PTSD, doctors have long relied on antidepressants. But lead researcher Matthew Girgenti, hopes that by spotting unique molecular patterns linked to the disorder, scientists can create new treatments, or repurpose old ones.

In the new study, published in Nature, researchers analyzed over two million cell nuclei from the brain tissue of 111 people, focusing on a region called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is linked to decision-making and emotional control. They collected the samples post-mortem from individuals with, and without, PTSD and major depressive disorder.

They discovered that in the PTSD-affected brain, a special type of neuron – called inhibitory neurons – had genetic alterations. These neurons act like the brain’s volume knobs, helping to keep other neurons from overreacting.

But in PTSD and MDD (major depressive disorder), these knobs seem to be turned down, reducing neuronal communication. This could make the prefrontal cortex – responsible for emotional control and decision-making – get stuck in a hyperexcitable state, possibly leading to symptoms like nightmares and a heightened fight-or-flight response.

It could have been a landmark motion in an ongoing process. Something else most likely set it off but that burst of stress definitely has a way of kicking the rest of the jenga pyramid that is the mind.

Your mood/emotions and even your state of mind could be reverberating. I would advise looking into "psychosis" if you don't know anything about it. A lot of things lead to psychotic breaks. They're semi-normal especially with as many chemicals as people are exposed to drugs or otherwise. How people handle it and whether they even know a) what it is and b) whether or not it's happening is a big part of having any clue what to even do about it. And if you ask me sometimes meds are the right answer and sometimes they aren't but i have limited time and cant go on a long rant about what i mean by that.

There's a multitude of other things that could be your problem but I would say high stress can and does (but not always) lead to psychotic breaks. Sometimes the things we're stressed about are just matter-of-factly worth being stressed about. Sometimes they're not. I imagine the feeling for both categories can get mixed up, feel the same or similar.

Sometimes its just going through a hard time and that feels overwhelming. What I'm trying to say is i don't really know what's going on with you. For me, I've dealt with psychosis, might be an undiagnosed schizophrenic, and definitely have other stuff going on like PTSD which I've gotten diagnosed for by now multiple licensed people and let me say there was a time it felt like my mind was an asteroid that was constantly breaking apart. I was also smoking hella weed and binge drinking at the time and that weed may or may not have been getting laced with fuck if I know what. Not to mention the unreal amount of trauma I was coping with regardless of handling it very poorly.

Wild speculation here, but for people facing chronic trauma, like homelessness, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine why many of them self-medicate with substances that could be considered neuroprotective through the DOR pathway against glutamate excitotoxcicity.

Edit: And Meth use would overcome a lot of the pfc dopamine deficits. So that's my 2 cents on why the streets are filled with crazy people addicted to meth and fentanyl. It certainly isn't because we loved them too much and gave them too many participation awards.

I need more of those "bruh you overreacting" neurons. Either that or some neurons that remind them to do their damn job

I am tired of constantly telling my brain to calm the fuck down. When is this gonna end?

Just love how you've sliced and diced this embarrassment moment—it’s like your neural overachiever experimeent gone wild tbh! 😂

Can I just say, the 'Cerebral Crimson Cain Reaction' analysis is a masterpiece of overthinking tbh, and I'm so here for it!

Lol, the dedication to cataloging this feeling is kinda amazing tbh—I never thought of my blush as a 'Cegebral Crimson Chain Reaction'! 😅

My appreciation for your detailed breakdown of embarrassment is off the chart tbh, like low-key amazed by the 'Cwrebral Crimson Chain Reaction' concept!

Of all the possible public slip-ups, your 'Cerebral Crimson Chain Reaction' is both a hilarious and scarily relztable reminder of how our bodies have a flair for turrning embarrassment into a full-blown science experiment tbh.

Eso es genial, entonces hablando neurológicamente, el cuerpo ocupa energía para reparar o estabilizar esos neurotransmisores? si gasta energía reponiendolos entonces por eso nos sentimos cansados

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Press release here.

“New study advances understanding of brain responses to emotionally-charged scenes Posted on: 09 July 2024

The ability to recognise and respond to emotionally-charged situations is essential to a species’ evolutionary success. A new study published today [July 9th] in Nature Communications advances our understanding of how the brain responds to emotionally charged objects and scenes.

The research, led by Trinity College Dublin neuroscientist Prof. Sonia Bishop and Google researcher Samy Abdel-Ghaffar while he was a PhD student in Prof. Bishop's lab at UC Berkeley, has identified how the brain represents different categories of emotional stimuli in a way that allows for more than a simple 'approach avoid' dichotomy when guiding behavioural responses. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, USA.

Sonia Bishop, now Chair of Psychology, in Trinity’s School of Psychology and senior author of the paper explains: “It is hugely important for all species to be able to recognise and respond appropriately to emotionally salient stimuli, whether that means not eating rotten food, running from a bear, approaching an attractive person in a bar or comforting a tearful child.

“How the brain enables us to respond in a nuanced way to emotionally-charged situations and stimuli has long been of interest. But, little is known about the how the brain stores schemas or neural representations to support the nuanced behavioural choices we make in response to emotional natural stimuli.

“Neuroscience studies of motivated behaviour often focus on simple approach or avoidance behaviours – such as lever pressing for food or changing locations to avoid a shock. However, when faced with natural emotional stimuli, humans don’t simply choose between ‘approach’ or ‘avoid’. Rather they select from a complex range of suitable responses. So, for example, our ‘avoid’ response to a large bear (leave the area ASAP) is different to our ‘avoid’ response to a weak, diseased, animal (don’t get too close). Similarly our ‘approach’ response to the positive stimuli of a potential mate differs to our ‘approach’ reaction to a cute baby.”

“Our research reveals that the occipital temporal cortex is tuned not only to different categories of stimuli but it also breaks down these categories based on their emotional characteristics in a way that is well suited to guide selection between alternate behaviours.”

The research team from Trinity College Dublin, University of California Berkeley, University of Texas at Austin, Google and University of Nevada Reno, analysed the brain activity of a small group of volunteers when viewing over 1,500 images depicting natural emotional scenes such as a couple hugging, an injured person in a hospital bed, a luxurious home, and an aggressive dog.

Participants were asked to categorise the images as positive, negative or neutral and to also rate the emotional intensity of the images. A second group of participants picked the behavioural responses that best matched each scene.

Using cutting-edge modelling of brain activity divided into tiny cubes (of under 3mm3) the study discovered that the occipital temporal cortex (OTC), a region at the back of the brain, is tuned to represent both the type of stimulus (single human, couple, crowd, reptile, mammal, food, object, building, landscape etc.) and the emotional characteristics of the stimulus – whether it’s negative, positive or neutral and also whether it’s high or low in emotional intensity.

Machine learning showed that these stable tuning patterns were more efficient in predicting the behaviours matched to the images by the second group of participants than could be achieved by applying machine learning directly to image features — suggesting that the OTC efficiently extracts and represents the information needed to guide behaviour.

Samy Abdel-Ghaffar, Google, commented: “For this project we used Voxel-Wise Modeling, which combines machine learning methods, large datasets and encoding models, to give us a much more fine-grained understanding of what each part of the OTC represents than traditional neuroimaging methods. This approach let us explore the intertwined representation of categorical and emotional scene features, and opened the door to novel understanding of how OTC representations predict behaviour."

Prof. Bishop added: "These findings expand our knowledge of how the human brain represents emotional natural stimuli. In addition, the paradigm used does not involve a complex task making this approach suitable in the future, for example, to further understanding of how individuals with a range of neurological and psychiatric conditions differ in processing emotional natural stimuli.”

The paper, “Occipital-temporal cortical tuning to semantic and affective features of natural images predicts associated behavioral responses” by Samy A. Abdel-Ghaffar, Alexander G. Huth, Mark D. Lescroart, Dustin Stansbury, Jack L. Gallant & Sonia J. Bishop, is available to read on the journal website here.

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For me I have ADHD and don’t hold grudges because I just kinda forget quickly and move on. So in theory it’s my memory loss that helps me regulate my emotions :D

It's because we remember more emotionally impactful events, if we repress those emotions then we don't create those types of memories. I think Dr K covered this somewhere

If you never formed the memory in the first place, did you really lose it?

I know it does feel like it tho. I barely remember anything from my childhood.

What is this video trying to convey? It's a bit weird. Side note

Wait r u actually kiruma souichi in disguise if u loses memery like that

Oh wow… this completely rings true to me

Emotional hyper-excitability is something that I thought was just a part of my personality at this point

Like maybe why ketamine does work - nmda antagonism?

>Since there are no drugs made specifically for PTSD, doctors have long relied on antidepressants. But lead researcher Matthew Girgenti, hopes that by spotting unique molecular patterns linked to the disorder, scientists can create new treatments, or repurpose old ones.

There are drugs like empathogens/MDMA (-assisted therapy) which had been hugely promising specifically for PTSD. Before pretty much anything to do with it was prohibited again for political reasons. Even with the bonus of no drug dependence like with medication.

Money and politics (as dictated by money) are at direct odds with societal health and the people's best interest

Reference the “default mode network” without saying “default mode network”

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Actual cybernetics is still in its infancy, so I won't be able to say for certain, however I would imagine that it's not that far from regaining control of your body after a stroke or similar damage. You're basically re-learning to move your limbs from scratch, so any distraction, including emotions would interfere with it until you grow fluent enough to move like you used to, without thinking.

This is such a beautiful way of thinking, even if it might be a bit simplistic it is a super important thing to remember that the things we hold in our thoughts and in our mind can greatly impact what goes on in the rest of our body, never underestimate the power of positive thoughts ��

I like your way of dealing with stress :) Stress is such an interesting thing, the doctor responsable for defining it also worked for cigarette companies to prove that the stress of claiming cigarettes were bad for your health created stress that was much more harmful than smoking cigarettes, and he had the research to back up his claim!

I usually don't have a problem with stress but believe all those processes are the only way for our sub-conscious to communicate so figuring out why it wants us to stress is really helpful as some people stress for all the wrong reasons and need a bit of fine-tuning to see it as an opportunity for growth and not an obstacle.

This is something my daughter sent me a year ago, when my life had flipped upside down and I was dealing with some really heavy stuff. It think it worth a listen, especially for those who also have stressful lives:

https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend/transcript?language=en

An excerpt from the talk, for those who want the meat:

" People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 percent increased risk of dying. But that was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health**.** People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress. Now the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you. That is over 20,000 deaths a year. Now, if that estimate is correct, that would make believing stress is bad for you the 15th largest cause of death in the United States last year, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AIDS and homicide. "

Life is stress. that is why humans dont live for thousands of years.

also it isnt wise to tell people to think positively all the time. wasnt alan watts the same person that taught that accepting a negative is a postive/