UCD: Teen Girls’ Brains React to Rejection
Everyone ruminates about the bad things that happen to them. Whether it’s a nasty breakup, an embarrassing failure or simply when someone is mean, it can be hard to stop thinking about what happened and why. For people who ruminate too much, this negative thought pattern can cause lasting problems with mental health.
A research team led from the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain found that adolescent girls who have a stronger tendency to ruminate show different patterns of brain activity when faced with social rejection. The study was published in December in the journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
Everyone experiences rejection, but not everyone experiences it in the same way. “By identifying what brain processes cause differences in the tendency to ruminate, we can provide people better ways to avoid long-term harm." —Amanda Guyer, associate director of the Center for Mind and Brain and professor of human ecology at UC Davis