The effects of stressful life events and trauma on brain structure and subsequent development of psychopathology

压力和创伤性事件被认为是许多精神疾病的重要风险因素，然而，很难确定压力如何导致精神病理学的机制（麦克尤恩和Stellar，1993）。先前的研究表明，压力性生活事件会影响大脑结构，特别是观察到海马体、前扣带皮层（ACC）和眶额皮层等区域的灰质体积（GMV）减少。理论上，过度应激激素如糖皮质激素导致树突萎缩、神经发生减少和神经元死亡，导致GMV的可观察到的减少（拉德利和莫里森，2005）。

Stressful and traumatic events are recognised as important risk factors for a number of psychiatric disorders, however it hasbeen difficult to identify the mechanism of how stress leads to psychopathology (McEwen and Stellar, 1993). Previous work hasdemonstrated that stressful life events affect brain structure, notably observed as reduction in grey matter volume (GMV) withinregions such as the hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and orbitofrontal cortex. It is theorised that an over-exposureto stress hormones such as glucocorticoids results in dendritic atrophy, reduced neurogenesis, and neuronal death, resulting inan observable reduction in GMV (Radley and Morrison, 2005).