Heightened activity of specific brain cells following traumatic social experience blocks social reward and promotes sustained social avoidance

Past social trauma is encoded by a population of stress/threat-responsive brain cells that become hyperactivated during subsequent interaction with non-threatening social targets. As a consequence, previously rewarding social targets are now perceived as social threats, which promotes generalized social avoidance and impaired social reward processing that can contribute to psychiatric disorders.

from Relationships News -- ScienceDaily https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221130114433.htm