Bullying triggers strong emotional and threat responses in the brain

In a collaboration between Turun yliopisto and the University of Turku, researchers led by Birgitta Paranko and Lauri Nummenmaa explored the immediate effects of bullying on the brain. 

As reported in their JNeurosci paper, the researchers measured neural and attentional responses while tweens (aged 11 to 14) and adults watched first-person videos of either people being bullied or more positive social interactions. For participants of all ages, bullying triggered distressful alarm states, activating social and emotional brain networks as well as autonomic threat response systems. Measuring eye-tracking responses and pupil sizes in a separate group of adults during video viewing supported these findings, showing stronger emotional and attentional responses to bullying than other social interactions. The researchers also discovered that these neural responses and alarm states were linked to viewers having previous real-life experiences being victims of bullying. 

In sum, says Nummenmaa, "We mapped distress pathways in the brain that may be promptly engaged when someone gets bullied, and showed that the continuous alarm state is hazardous for both mental and somatic health due to the increased autonomic activation."