Early life experiences can affect brain development and neurobiologic health. New research shows that these effects can be passed on to later generations, reporting that children of mothers who were emotionally neglected in childhood had altered brain circulation display that was involved in fear and anxiety responses.
The study appears in Biological Psychology: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
“These results show that the development of our brain is not only shaped by what happens in our own lives, but is also influenced by what happened to our parents before we were born. namely, “said the lead author of the study, Cassandra Hendrix, PhD, Department of Pyschology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Dr. Hendrix and her colleagues studied 48 pairs of black mother-infants beginning in the first trimester of pregnancy. Mothers were given a questionnaire to assess childhood trauma (experiences of abuse or early neglect). The mothers were also evaluated for normal stress levels, preterm birth, and for anxiety and depression. One month after birth, babies underwent a brain scan using magnetic resonance imaging of a relaxed state function, a noninvasive technology that could be used while the babies were sleeping naturally.
“These remarkable results reduce our ability to image the brain and its activity very early in life,” said Cameron Carter, MD, Editor at Biological Psychology: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
The researchers focused on brain connections between the amygdala, which is at the heart of the processing of fearful emotions, and two other brain regions: the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex. Each domain plays a key role in managing emotions. Babies whose mothers had childhood emotional neglect had stronger functional connections between the amygdala and the cortical regions.
After controlling maternal normal stress levels, the researchers found that the more emotional neglect a mother had experienced in her own childhood, the stronger her baby’s amygdala was attached to the facial cortical regions. Physical abuse or neglect of the mother was not tied to the stronger bond. The findings show that childhood emotional neglect has an intergenerational effect on brain structure and function.
The importance of the stronger link remains unclear, Dr. Hendrix said. “The neural signature we saw in 1-month-old babies of emotionally neglected mothers could be a tool that leads to an increased risk for anxiety, or it could be as a means of compensation that encourages suffering in case the child has less supportive carers. in all cases, emotional neglect from a mother’s own childhood seems to leave a neural signature in her child that may cause the child to more easily detect a threat in the environment almost from birth . Our findings highlight the importance of emotional support early in life, even for later generations. “
“The findings add to evidence of intergenerational outcomes against early life, such as maternal neglect,” said Dr. Carter. “Future studies that follow children in the long term will help us to ‘understand the effect of the action of these changes in brain function on the emotional and social development of children of mothers of early neglect. “
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