Racial discrimination (RD) is a type of racism regularly experienced by people of color. RD refers to hostile or inequitable treatment of an individual due to their perceived racial or ethnic background, and an overwhelming majority of racially-marginalized individuals report experiences of racial discrimination throughout their lives. RD contributes to physical and mental health disparities in Black Americans [1]; however, the mechanisms by which RD influences neurophysiological adaptations and consequent behaviors are poorly understood.

Repeated exposure to RD triggers heightened sympathetic arousal and cardiovascular stress responses. Over time, this leads to psychological withdrawal, which may manifest through emotional numbing or disengagement, dissociation, and disruptions in interoceptive awareness (the ability to consciously perceive body sensations). Dissociation is a human coping response to extreme stress characterized by feelings of detachment from the body (depersonalization) and/or surroundings (derealization). It is more likely to occur when physical escape from the trauma/stressor is impossible or risky; for example, many survivors of chronic childhood sexual abuse report feeling separated from their bodies during the event. Dissociation is a homeostatic (reactive regulatory) adaptation that allows individuals to endure/survive these experiences, providing a psychological escape. However, over time dissociation can become a reflexive, involuntary, and allostatic (predictive regulatory) reaction that interferes with functioning, particularly via disrupted attentional control and aberrant interoception. Experiencing detachment from the self and surroundings may thus impair the ability to sustain goal-directed attention and sense fluctuations in internal body signals, which are critical aspects of emotion regulation and day-to-day functioning. Dissociation is characterized by dis-connectivity within and between interoceptive and emotion regulation networks [2], illustrating that is a complex process spanning multiple cognitive and physiological domains.

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