Brain Reward Circuits Promote Stress Resilience and Health: Implications for Reward-Based Interventions

Abstract

From the COVID-19 global pandemic to racial injustice and the continued impact of climate change on communities across the globe, the past couple of years have demonstrated the need for a greater understanding of how to protect people from the negative consequences of stress. Here, I outline a perspective on how the brain’s reward system might be an important, but often understudied, protective mechanism for stress resilience and stress-related health outcomes. I describe work suggesting that engagement of the reward system inhibits the stress response and is associated with improved health outcomes, including reduced depressive symptomatology and slowed cancer progression. I then highlight important future directions for translational research and illustrate the value of this perspective for improving behavioral interventions in clinical psychology and beyond.