Neurobiological correlates of the social and emotional impact of peer victimization: A review

Abstract

Peer victimization is very common during late childhood and adolescence. Despite the relatively reduced number of studies, the neurobiological underpinnings of the negative impact of peer victimization experiences have received increasing attention in recent years. The present selective review summarizes the most recent available evidence and provides a general overview of the impact of peer victimization experiences on social processing and decision-making at the neurobiological level, highlighting the most pressing areas requiring further research. Three key cognitive areas show a clear negative impact of peer victimization and bullying experiences: social valuation processing, reward and reinforcement learning and self-regulation processes. Victims show enhanced activation in key regions of the limbic system including the amygdala, rostral and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices, suggestive of enhanced sensitivity to social stimuli. They also show enhanced recruitment of lateral prefrontal regions crucially involved in cognitive and emotional regulation processes, and abnormal reward-related striatal function. The presence of psychopathology is a complex factor, increased as a consequence of peer victimization, but that also constitutes vulnerability to such experiences.

Keywords: adolescents; neurobiology; peer victimization; reward; social processing.

Figure 1

Comparison of the number of publications on neural mechanisms of peer victimization. The figure shows the number of publications displayed in a search in pubmed with the words “Peer victimization” and “brain” relative to the number of publications on “Early Life Adversity” and “Brain”. Search data: 25 January 2022.