Changes in brain networks may help youth adapt to childhood adversity
Family stressors can take a toll on children and approximately two-thirds of youth will experience some form of childhood adversity by the age of 18. Research has primarily focused on how adversity at a young age can lead to mood disorders in adolescence, but most children exhibit resilience to adverse experiences. So senior author Dr. Marilyn Essex, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, and colleagues followed 132 kids from infancy to 18 years old to search for a neurobiological mechanism of emotional adaptation. "The study shows us how experience changes the brain and how resilience reflects healthy emotion regulation," said Dr. Cameron Carter, Editor of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging . The researchers chose to focus on common types of childhood adversity, such as negative parenting, parental conflict and financial stress that occurred between infancy and 11 years of age. When the youth were 15 to 18 years old, the re...