Chronic stress factors such as poverty and violence can have a negative impact on the persistent child, and may appear according to a new study in the latest issue with behavior problems, health or employment later in life, to be associated, the journal Biological Psychiatry.
Can While a certain amount of stress is experienced young people to help them learn to adapt and, with the hurdles of life, the researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison report that the toxic long-term exposure, as they grow under conditions of poverty neglect or even physically abused have adverse long-term effects.
In their new study, the authors of the study have shown that this type of early life stress factors can affect parts of the responsibility for learning, memory and stress management and emotional development of children brain. These changes may be associated with adverse effects on behavior, well-being and also the choice of romantic partner in life.
"I really do not understand why the things that, if you happen to have 2, 3, 4 years with you and have a lasting impact," said co-lead investigator and professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Seth Pollak in a explanation. "When you consider how expensive these stressful experiences are starting to society ... unless we understand what part of the brain is affected, we will not be able to do something to adapt."
Childhood stress has been linked to education and employment with depression, anxiety, heart disease, cancer, and the lack of success, Pollak said. The results could be important for economists, epidemiologists, policy makers and others, added the director and recent graduate Dr. Jamie Hanson Wisconsin to its author.
As part of its investigation, Hanson, Pollak and his colleagues recruited 128 children for approximately 12 years, who had each of them physical abuse, neglect or early life was suffered by houses with low socioeconomic status.
The authors conducted in-depth interviews with children and their caregivers, documentation of behavior problems and the establishment of a list of stressful life events. They also took pictures of the brain of each youth, especially in the areas of emotions and stress management, hippocampus and amygdala involved.
The results have been with children who compared the same age, but that came from the homes of the middle class and not abused in childhood. Team Hanson said the hippocampus and amygdala by hand each child and worked, the choice is not with the computer measures because of the risk of error.
This hand-based measures show that children who had been exposed in the first life on one of three types of stress had less almonds that those who reported such experiences. Similarly, children from families with low socioeconomic status and those who are victims of physical violence had smaller hippocampal volume, according to the research team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The implementation of these same images showed no effect by automated software.
Pollak, who is also the director of the Children's Research Laboratory Emotion UW Waisman Center, said the findings "an important reminder that, as a society, we need to engage in the kind of experiences children. Shaping people they are."
But he and Hanson explained that the results of their study are markers of neurobiological changes that shows how to change the human brain and biology, but not a way to predict the effects that in the past a person is in your future . "This is in the brain, does not mean it is fate," Hanson said.
Figure 2 (below): The various forms of stress early in life, such as child abuse or poverty, the impact of the size of two important brain regions: the hippocampus (red) and amygdala (green), according to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison . Children who have experienced such as stress, had little almonds and hippocampai, the behavior problems was related to these people. Credit: Jamie Hanson and Seth Pollak