Early caregiving and human biobehavioral development: a comparative physiology approach

Abstract

A large and growing body of evidence demonstrates associations between quality of the early caregiving environment and risk for stress-related illness across the lifespan. The recent research examining associations between early caregiving environments and subsequent development is reviewed, with particular attention to early programming and subsequent malleability of systems underlying stress responsivity. A developmental comparative physiology model is suggested; one in which postnatal programming and phenotypic plasticity act in concert as mechanisms underlying the persisting effects of early care environments for biobehavioral outcomes.

The Developmental Origins of Opioid Use Disorder and Its Comorbidities

“…Analogous influences of critical environmental signals on network maturation are known for other circuits, including the visual and auditory (Zhang et al, 2001 ; Li et al, 2006 ). Just as these systems require predictable sensory inputs at specific times during development to mature properly, parental signals may provide important stimuli for the maturing reward system (Hane and Fox, 2016 ; Davis et al, 2017 ; Andersen, 2018 ; Glynn and Baram, 2019 ). Thus, understanding how the early environment alters reward circuitry will be critical for developing future interventions against OUD and other mental health problems.…”

The Welch Emotional Connection Screen: validation of a brief mother–infant relational health screen

“…Future analyses of data from the physiological profiles in EC+ versus ECÀ dyads earlier than 4 months of age, and longitudinally at later ages, are necessary to elucidate the role of Emotional Connection in the development of preterm infants and the physiological co-regulation hypothesis. Such research in other groups of infants is also necessary to determine whether EC+/ECÀ is associated with a host of suboptimal mother-infant interactions that place infants at developmental risk, including maternal depression (40) and other types of early adversity (41). While there is much potential for the WECS to be used in research with community samples of mothers and infants for basic research or as a screening tool for at-risk mother-infant dyads, the findings reported here are based on mothers and preterm infants, which limits generalisability.…”

Early life trauma increases threat response of peri‐weaning rats, reduction of axo‐somatic synapses formed by parvalbumin cells and perineuronal net in the basolateral nucleus of amygdala

“…Environment shapes postnatal neurodevelopment to produce adaptive individual differences in ecologically relevant responses (Aoki & Erisir, ; Hane & Fox, ). However, early life trauma, especially when associated with maltreatment by a caregiver, can go beyond adaptation to initiate pathology involving heightened amygdala‐dependent responses to threat, including childhood anxiety and post‐traumatic stress disorder (Fareri & Tottenham, ; Heim & Nemeroff, ; Malter Cohen et al, ; Teicher, Samson, Anderson, & Ohashi, ; Tottenham, ).…”