Exposure to Bullying Engages Social Distress Circuits in the Adolescent and Adult Brain

Abstract

Despite advances in understanding the psychological and social consequences of peer victimization, the immediate effects of bullying on the central nervous system remain elusive. Here we mapped the neural, affective, and attentional responses to simulated bullying in adolescents and adults and tested whether these responses are associated with real-life victimization experiences. Fifty-one adolescents (29 females, 22 males) aged 11–14 years and 47 adults (29 females, 18 males) underwent a functional MRI (fMRI) while watching first-person videos of bullying (victimization) in the school environment, as well as neutral and positive social interactions in a similar setting. Additionally, 57 adults (36 females, 21 males) watched the same videos during an eye tracking experiment. Exposure to bullying versus positive social interaction engaged the socioemotional and threat response systems, as well as regions related to social cognition, sensory and interoceptive processing, and motor control. These responses were consistent across adolescents and adults and were associated with the current and past victimization experiences of the participants. This large-scale activation of neural systems subserving socioemotional, somatosensory, and interoceptive processing was in line with the amplified emotional and attentional responses revealed by larger pupil size and higher fixation frequency during simulated bullying in the eye tracking experiment. Altogether these results highlight how peer victimization evokes a state of stress and alarm in the central nervous system.