From helplessness to controllability: toward a neuroscience of resilience
Michael Baratta, Martin Seligman and Steven Maier review how research on learned helplessness developed and what neuroscience has since shown about stressor controllability. They report that the original view, that uncontrollability was the active ingredient, has been replaced by one in which prolonged aversive stimulation itself produces the debilitation and control is what is learned. The review describes a circuit in which the medial prefrontal cortex detects control and inhibits serotonin neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus, and notes that most of the work used male rats and that the translation to humans is speculative.
Michael Baratta, Martin Seligman and Steven Maier review how research on learned helplessness developed and what neuroscience has since shown about stressor controllability. They report that the original view, that uncontrollability was the active ingredient, has been replaced by one in which prolonged aversive stimulation itself produces the debilitation and control is what is learned. The review describes a circuit in which the medial prefrontal cortex detects control and inhibits serotonin neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus, and notes that most of the work used male rats and that the translation to humans is speculative.
Written from the full text of the open-access article, read 2026-10-25, apart from the sections on therapy and prevention.
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Baratta, M. V., Seligman, M. E. P., & Maier, S. F. (2023). From helplessness to controllability: toward a neuroscience of resilience. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, 1170417. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1170417