Mechanisms linking early life stress to adult health outcomes

Abstract

Research relating stress to health has progressed from anecdotal evidence in the 1930s and 1940s to complex multivariate models that identify underlying longitudinal mechanisms. Enduring questions that have guided our research are: How does the early life environment affect health outcomes into adulthood? How is the latent damage stored and what processes are set into motion that link early life stress to health disorders in the later years? An emerging perspective focuses on the accumulation of interacting dysregulations in multiple physiological systems that compromise the systems' abilities to respond flexibly to stressful circumstances. Our research explores: the antecedents of these processes, including genetic predispositions, the harshness of the early environment, and their interaction; the mediating roles of neural regulation in the brain and psychological and social resources; and health-related outcomes, such as metabolic functioning and inflammatory processes.environment | genes | health

Behavioral and neuroendocrine consequences of juvenile stress combined with adult immobilization in male rats

“…6 adversity, compromising the ability of the organism to manage stress (McEwen, 1998;Taylor, 2010). Alternatively, the "match-mismatch" models predict that after a juvenile stress experience, individuals will show improvements in coping behavior and adaptability to further exposures to stress in adulthood (Claessens et al, 2011;Oitzl et al, 2010;Schmidt, 2011).…”

What is a representative brain? Neuroscience meets population science

“…Likewise, the size of our social networks relates to brain structure (93,94). Given that the social environment is known to affect a wide array of biological responses (5,17,19,95), a next important goal for neuroscience will be to further understand how experience at multiple levels (e.g., culture, family, social networks, SES) affects neural structure and function (46,(96)(97)(98)(99)(100)(101). In parallel, it is certain that social and environmental variables moderate the link between brain and behavior (12), but further research is needed to examine such interactions.…”

“…Getting Inside the Black Box: Adding Neuroimaging and Other Neuroscience Methods to Broader Population Science Over the last several years, there has been a rapid expansion of social and population researchers using biomarkers (e.g., cortisol response, cholesterol levels, epigenetics) to examine how the social environment gets under the skin (17,35). Examining these biological mechanisms of social environment and health has produced important justifications for funding of continued work in the social and population sciences (5,36).…”

“…A more recent focus within population sciences on how the broader environment "gets under the skin" suggests that this may be a key moment to look to the brain. Health psychologists have demonstrated that the broader environment becomes biologically embedded in the brain over the course of development (5,(13)(14)(15)(16)(17), but how does this yield observed variations within populations? Therefore, we argue that the critical juncture described for neuroscience research also poses an opportunity for population science research more broadly.…”

Neural substrates of cognitive bias and anxiogenesis

“…Briefly, these studies indicate that harsh environment generates stronger amygdala responses and individuals exposed to these environments are unable to recruit the prefrontal cortex effectively for regulating emotional responses to threatening cues [33]. Increased anxiety-related temperamental traits in young adults was found to be associated with increased amygdala and insula reactivity to certain types of emotional processing in social anxiety [34] and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [35].…”