Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Social species create emergent organizations beyond the individual that range from pair bonds to colonies to civilizations.These emergent structures likely evolved hand-in-hand with supporting physiological mechanisms as the consequent social behaviors helped these organisms survive, reproduce, and care for offspring sufficiently long to ensure the successful passage of genes to the next generation.Indeed, for many species, inclusion within a social group is essential for survival and its absence represents a significant threat to existence and, as such, engenders pronounced neurobiological, physiological and psychological responses that can have rather dramatic effects on health.The appreciation of this fact has led to the growth of research into the reciprocal interaction between social, psychological and physiological processes.As such, this research represents an interdisciplinary approach devoted to understanding how biological systems modulate, and are modulated by, social processes.In the present dissertation I review my work evaluating the association between psychosocial processes and health in humans and animal models of human disease.I begin by discussing the potent effects of psychological stress on the behavioral and physiological manifestations of peripheral nerve injury, an animal model of chronic of the advice and collaboration of Zachary Weil during my first year of graduate school.I would especially like to thank Ning Zhang for the hundreds of surgeries described in the animal sections of this dissertation.
Author: Greg J. Norman
Institution: The Ohio State University
Language: English
Subfield: Behavioral Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2429600996