The Impact of Infant Stress on the Teen Brain 11 Nov 2012

A study published today in Nature Neuroscience contributes to understanding the specific ways in which exposure to early stress affects the connectivity of the maturing brain.

“This is one of the first demonstrations that early stress seems to have an impact on the the way this regulatory circuitry is set up in late adolescence,” says Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the leaders of the study.

The study showed that 18-year-old girls who had had high cortisol levels at age 4 have weak connectivity between the amygdala, a deep nub of the brain known for processing fear and emotions, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an outer region involved in curbing the amygdala’s stress response.

(Image credit: editinghelpsite - http://www.flickr.com/photos/lem22/)

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