ReviewNeuroscience and biobehavioral reviews2023
The Aversive Lens: Stress effects on the prefrontal-cingulate cortical pathways that regulate emotion.
Review in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- Early or recent trauma in treatment-resistant depression: a systematic review.CNS spectrums · 2025Pooled it
- Preliminary evidence that ketamine alters anterior cingulate resting-state functional connectivity in depressed individuals.Translational psychiatry · 2023Trial
- Trial
- Article
- Adaptation to Stress Switches Stress-Evoked Network Disconnection to a New Forebrain Network State.eNeuro · 2026Article
- Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Circuitry at the Intersection of Cognition and Disease.Biological psychiatry · 2026Review
- Cross-ancestry pleiotropic analysis of imaging-derived phenotypes enhances risk stratification of depression.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Structural imaging predictors of ketamine response in treatment-resistant depression: a machine learning approach.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Towards Mechanism-Informed Treatments for Mental Health.Journal of neurochemistry · 2026Review
- Prefrontal Cortex Dysfunction as a Precipitating Factor for Schizophrenia and Depression.Journal of neurochemistry · 2026Review
- Kynurenic acid signaling expands in human and nonhuman primates and impairs dorsolateral prefrontal cortical cognition that is key to mental illness.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Prefrontal spine loss in neuropsychiatric disorders: circuit consequences for cognition.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Review
- Symptom-specific alterations in subregional intrinsic connectivity of anterior cingulate cortex in major depressive disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Dysfunction in primate dorsolateral prefrontal area 46 affects motivation and anxiety.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Mechanistic intersections between migraine and major depressive disorder.The journal of headache and pain · 2025Review
- Neuroimaging and Emotional Development in the Pediatric Population: Understanding the Link Between the Brain, Emotions, and Behavior.Pediatric reports · 2025Review
- Integrated Gene and Isoform-Level Transcriptomic Analysis of Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Human Prefrontal Cortex.The Yale journal of biology and medicine · 2025Article
- Somatosensory and prefrontal cortex activity relates to emotional outcomes and hair cortisol concentration in chronic postsurgical pain.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Stress and Inflammation Target Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex Function: Neural Mechanisms Underlying Weakened Cognitive Control.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- Contrasting patterns of extrasynaptic NMDAR-GluN2B expression in macaque subgenual cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices.Frontiers in neuroanatomy · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
ARNSTEN, A.F.T., M.K.P. Joyce and A.C. Roberts. The Aversive Lens: Stress effects on the prefrontal-cingulate cortical pathways that regulate emotion. NEUROSCI BIOBEHAV REV XXX-XXX, 2022. The symptoms of major-depressive-disorder include psychic pain and anhedonia, i.e. seeing the world through an "aversive lens". The neurobiology underlying this shift in worldview is emerging. Here these data are reviewed, focusing on how activation of subgenual cingulate (BA25) induces an "aversive lens", and how higher prefrontal cortical (PFC) areas (BA46/10/32) provide top-down regulation of BA25 but are weakened by excessive dopamine and norepinephrine release during stress exposure, and dendritic spine loss with chronic stress exposure. These changes may generate an attractor state, which maintains the brain under the control of BA25, requiring medication or neuromodulatory treatments to return connectivity to a more flexible state. In line with this hypothesis, effective anti-depressant treatments reduce the activity of BA25 and restore top-down regulation by higher circuits, e.g. as seen with SSRI medications, ketamine, deep brain stimulation of BA25, or rTMS to strengthen dorsolateral PFC. This research has special relevance in an era of chronic stress caused by the COVID19 pandemic, political unrest and threat of climate change.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.