Neurobiology of Emotion in Depression: From Molecular Mechanisms to Social-Affective Dynamics

Depression arises not only from direct stress exposure but also from complex disruptions in emotional processing, internal state regulation, and socially shaped affective experiences. Emotional mechanisms including increased threat perception, altered valence encoding, impaired reward processing, rumination, and maladaptive learning play a central role in how depressive states emerge and persist. At the neurobiological level, dysregulation within cortico-limbic circuits, neuromodulatory pathways, neuroimmune signaling, and stress-adaptive neuroplasticity contributes to shifts in emotional salience, interoceptive interpretation, and behavioral output.Socially mediated processes such as empathy, emotional resonance, and vicarious or observational stress represent additional layers through which emotional load may influence depressive vulnerability. Biological sex, developmental stage, endocrine status, and environmental context further shape heterogeneity in emotional responses and their downstream molecular and circuit consequences. This Research Topic seeks to unify work examining how emotional processes; both internally generated and socially influenced interact with molecular signaling, neural circuitry, and behavior to sculpt depressive phenotypes.The goal of this collection is to integrate research on the emotional foundations of depression across molecular, cellular, circuit, behavioral, and social levels. We aim to highlight mechanisms by which emotional states are generated, maintained, dysregulated, and transmitted, and how these processes interact with stress pathways, neuromodulatory systems, plasticity mechanisms, and network-level functions. This Topic encourages contributions that clarify how internal emotional regulation interfaces with affective burden, maladaptive learning, reward dysregulation, threat bias, stress sensitivity, and vicarious or socially mediated emotional experiences. By bringing together diverse approaches, spanning animal models, human studies, computational modeling, and translational work, we seek to advance mechanistic insight and identify convergent pathways that may inform predictive biomarkers and targeted interventions for emotion-linked depressive states.We welcome original research, reviews, methods, and clinical or computational work exploring emotional mechanisms in depression across species and modalities. Submissions may address, but are not limited to:- Molecular and cellular pathways regulating emotional reactivity and depressive vulnerability, including neuromodulators, neuroimmune interactions, stress hormones, synaptic plasticity, and sex-dependent mechanisms.- Circuit and systems level processing of emotional information, including amygdala–prefrontal–insula–hippocampal communication, network synchrony, salience coding, reward and threat processing, and emotion-cognition integration.- Behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of emotional disturbance in depression, such as rumination, anhedonia, affective learning, avoidance, social withdrawal, interoceptive and exteroceptive biases, and maladaptive decision-making.- Social and vicarious emotional influences, including empathy, affective resonance, observational stress, caregiving burden, and socially transmitted affect contributing to depressive outcomes.- Cross-species and multimodal emotion research, integrating behavioral phenotyping, electrophysiology, neuroimaging, computational modeling, machine learning, and multi-omics approaches to map emotional dysfunction in depression.- Translational frameworks and intervention targets based on emotional mechanisms spanning biomarkers, circuit modulation, pharmacological strategies, behavioral therapies, and predictive modeling. Topic editors: Sumana Chakravarty, Tapatee Das Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/76757/neurobiology-of-emotion-in-depression-from-molecular-mechanisms-to-social-affective-dynamics