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How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle

People who habituate to stress show a repetition-induced response attenuation—neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, neuroenergetic, and emotional—when exposed to a threatening environment. But the exact dynamics underlying stress habituation remain obscure. The free energy principle offers a unifying acco...

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Autores principales: Hartwig, Mattis, Bhat, Anjali, Peters, Achim
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9195169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35712161
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.865203
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author Hartwig, Mattis
Bhat, Anjali
Peters, Achim
author_facet Hartwig, Mattis
Bhat, Anjali
Peters, Achim
author_sort Hartwig, Mattis
collection PubMed
description People who habituate to stress show a repetition-induced response attenuation—neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, neuroenergetic, and emotional—when exposed to a threatening environment. But the exact dynamics underlying stress habituation remain obscure. The free energy principle offers a unifying account of self-organising systems such as the human brain. In this paper, we elaborate on how stress habituation can be explained and modelled using the free energy principle. We introduce habituation priors that encode the agent’s tendency for stress habituation and incorporate them in the agent’s decision-making process. Using differently shaped goal priors—that encode the agent’s goal preferences—we illustrate, in two examples, the optimising (and thus habituating) behaviour of agents. We show that habituation minimises free energy by reducing the precision (inverse variance) of goal preferences. Reducing the precision of goal priors means that the agent accepts adverse (previously unconscionable) states (e.g., lower social status and poverty). Acceptance or tolerance of adverse outcomes may explain why habituation causes people to exhibit an attenuation of the stress response. Given that stress habituation occurs in brain regions where goal priors are encoded, i.e., in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and that these priors are encoded as sufficient statistics of probability distributions, our approach seems plausible from an anatomical-functional and neuro-statistical point of view. The ensuing formal and generalisable account—based on the free energy principle—further motivate our novel treatment of stress habituation. Our analysis suggests that stress habituation has far-reaching consequences, protecting against the harmful effects of toxic stress, but on the other hand making the acceptability of precarious living conditions and the development of the obese type 2 diabetes mellitus phenotype more likely.
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spelling pubmed-91951692022-06-15 How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle Hartwig, Mattis Bhat, Anjali Peters, Achim Front Psychol Psychology People who habituate to stress show a repetition-induced response attenuation—neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, neuroenergetic, and emotional—when exposed to a threatening environment. But the exact dynamics underlying stress habituation remain obscure. The free energy principle offers a unifying account of self-organising systems such as the human brain. In this paper, we elaborate on how stress habituation can be explained and modelled using the free energy principle. We introduce habituation priors that encode the agent’s tendency for stress habituation and incorporate them in the agent’s decision-making process. Using differently shaped goal priors—that encode the agent’s goal preferences—we illustrate, in two examples, the optimising (and thus habituating) behaviour of agents. We show that habituation minimises free energy by reducing the precision (inverse variance) of goal preferences. Reducing the precision of goal priors means that the agent accepts adverse (previously unconscionable) states (e.g., lower social status and poverty). Acceptance or tolerance of adverse outcomes may explain why habituation causes people to exhibit an attenuation of the stress response. Given that stress habituation occurs in brain regions where goal priors are encoded, i.e., in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and that these priors are encoded as sufficient statistics of probability distributions, our approach seems plausible from an anatomical-functional and neuro-statistical point of view. The ensuing formal and generalisable account—based on the free energy principle—further motivate our novel treatment of stress habituation. Our analysis suggests that stress habituation has far-reaching consequences, protecting against the harmful effects of toxic stress, but on the other hand making the acceptability of precarious living conditions and the development of the obese type 2 diabetes mellitus phenotype more likely. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-31 /pmc/articles/PMC9195169/ /pubmed/35712161 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.865203 Text en Copyright © 2022 Hartwig, Bhat and Peters. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Hartwig, Mattis
Bhat, Anjali
Peters, Achim
How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle
title How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle
title_full How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle
title_fullStr How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle
title_full_unstemmed How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle
title_short How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle
title_sort how stress can change our deepest preferences: stress habituation explained using the free energy principle
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9195169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35712161
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.865203
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