Childhood Adversity Linked to Earlier Puberty, Premature Brain Development

https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2019/may/childhood-adversity-linked-to-earlier-puberty

by conse_lad • 7 years ago

120 109 7 years ago

themgt• 7 years ago

My layman's impression from paying some attention to psych/neuroscience is that there's an increased amount of scrutiny/skepticism towards this type of study which (afaict) fails to take into account potential genetic confounding while the authors describe the discovered correlations in causal terms.

We can be nearly certain that SES and TES are significantly heritable. Without accounting for that innate heritability, how can they say to what degree the outcomes are the result of circumstances/events?

RubberbandSoul• 7 years ago

I think they usually use twin studies to try to compensate for heritability but I couldn't find any mention of it in the article.

sambe• 7 years ago

I think they usually _don’t_ use twin studies because they are harder/more expensive. In this case they used the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort:

https://www.med.upenn.edu/bbl/philadelphianeurodevelopmental...

I don’t see any mention of twins here or on JAMA, although I can’t access the full text currently.

ordu• 7 years ago

This article even worse then just correlational research. It doesn't say anything new what you couldn't guess in advance. When speaking about psychological research describing correlations and saying nothing new, it is a sign of zero scientific value of the article.

Not really zero, because a confirmation of the common tribal knowledge have its value, but not much.

There are questions I'd like to ask and to know answers. For example, how the parenting style affects post-effects of adversities in a childhood. Is it possible to overcome negative impact with a parenting style? Maybe it is possible to get all the good effects (like faster development of a child) while avoiding bad ones?

Is there a link between parenting style and adversities? If it is a causal link than what direction it have? How the direction of a link affects development of a child?

Did adversities led child to feel himself not like his peers and if they did, what the impact it had? Maybe if we gather children with a similar issues and show them that they are not alone it would help? Or maybe it is better to keep child in a diverse environment? Does the answer depends on a kind of adversity?

These questions are the first that came to my mind. I could pose a few more if I thought a little longer. But the article doesn't try to answer these question, it just states the stupid correlation which anyone know without any article.

posbehsf• 7 years ago

It took me into my late 20s to realize that I had a traumatic childhood. The thing is I did not grow up in a poor or abusive household. I grew up in an upper middle class family that looked extremely normal, and for a long time believed it myself, until I started wondering why I had since jr high felt acutely depressed, empty, and unable to hold on to meaningful relationships. Only a few years ago did I realize that both my parents were emotionally neglectful and did not validate my emotions at all growing up, and did not act or behave in a way that seemed like they were even aware that emotional care and validation of their child is at the core of good parenting, and not just feeding them and putting a roof over their head.

It explained a lot about how I act today, and why I became very independent at an early age. I continue to struggle with feelings of emptiness, depersonalization, emotional numbness. It sucks to feel like you cannot escape your childhood even as a grown adult.

johnchristopher2• 7 years ago

Only a few years ago did I realize that both my parents were emotionally neglectful and did not validate my emotions at all growing up, and did not act or behave in a way that seemed like they were even aware that emotional care and validation of their child is at the core of good parenting, and not just feeding them and putting a roof over their head.

That's something I only vaguely became aware of in my 30's. I still have a hard time realizing that a roof and food is enough to raise robots but not a human being.

How are you coping with it now that you are aware of it ?

overton2• 7 years ago

I relate to this story personally. Wish you the best, and here are some resources that have helped me:

- after many failed attempts doing CBT and mindfulness based therapy, doing psychodynamic psychotherapy with a therapist who takes relationships and trauma seriously

- "Complex PTSD: From surviving to Thriving" (Pete Walker)

- "The Tao of Fully Feeling" (Pete Walker)

- "Treating Adult Survivors of Emotional Abuse and Neglect" (Hopper/Grossman/Spinazzola/Zucker)

- "Adult children of emotionally immature parents" (Gibson)

eee_honda• 7 years ago

Would also recommend Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk's lengthy tome, "The Body Keeps The Score". Been recommended on HN several times before (including once by me, I think).

Haven't checked out some of these other titles (only know of pete walker, loving "From Surviving To Thriving"), thanks. Do you know about EMDR? Worth looking into, IMO.

hoorayimhelping• 7 years ago

There was that running Bill Cosby joke in our house: "I brought you into this world, I'll take you out, and make another one just like you." It sucks, having to figure out how to validate emotions yourself and find intrinsic value in yourself at a young age. It sucks realizing your old man is using you for the butt of a joke as a 10 year old.

But I can never bring myself to say "I am the victim of childhood trauma" when friends of mine were sexually abused by their fathers, or other friends were violently beaten by an uncle or a sibling. I didn't get the emotional support I felt I needed, but that is way different than being actively traumatized by a malicious adult.

It sucks to feel like you cannot escape your childhood even as a grown adult.

It does, it really does. I used to deal with that a lot. This is a hugely unpopular opinion but I needed to hear it to move on and finally be whole: as long as you frame things the way it seems like you're framing them, namely: "it's my parents' fault that I'm unhappy as an adult," you'll never be able to 'escape' your childhood.

Trying to escape didn't work for me. The only thing that made me feel whole was acknowledging the past, accepting that my parents are humans trying their best, or suffering from huge amounts of stress, and it may have been tough for me at the time, and moving the hell on from it.

Said another way: there's no Karmatic Force that is going to reward me when I die because I silently suffered from emotional pain. So I might as well figure out how to put this behind me and live the best life I can, since God isn't going to give me a primo seat in heaven just cause mommy and daddy didn't love me enough down here in the pits.

I'm not trying to minimize what you're feeling or the pain this brings or how difficult it is to be whole after this. I've just found that perspective helped me tremendously in this situation.

0xcde4c3db• 7 years ago

Your description is very similar to the refrigerator mother theory [1]. Genetic predispositions may be a factor in both your parents' behavior and your symptoms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_mother_theory

0815test4• 7 years ago

That "refrigerator" theory didn't posit anything on the same scale as actual narcissistic abuse, though. Narcissistic/psychopathic abuse doesn't feel like a refrigerator, it feels like a dumpster fire that's constantly being blamed on you, often in the most persistent and verbally abusive ways you could imagine. And since we're specifically discussing changes in what we expect and how we relate to others, adverse effects are far more likely than wrt. a disorder involving perception and general cognitive development, as with autism.

Mary-Jane• 7 years ago

"The study suggests that it makes sense for parents and anyone involved in raising a child to try and shield or protect the child from exposure to adversity."

I'm sorry, this is just silly. Prior to the industrial revolution, low SES and high TES were normal; life was hardship and adversity. Think about that: humans have been around for about 200,000 years - that's a lot of generations of f'ed up kids. How did we ever survive?

martindbp• 7 years ago

Could be that there is a kind of developmental switch. If life is tough as a child, it makes sense to speed up development to improve odds of survival. If you find yourself in a safe, loving and caring place, then you have the option of spending more time and energy developing the brain.

life was hardship and adversity

Not necessarily. Many argue that hunters and gatherers lived a much better life than during most of recorded history. There is plenty of evidence for this. It's entirely possible that a child would find itself in a small, well functioning group of people, without any major adversity during childhood.

layoutIfNeeded2• 7 years ago

Many argue that hunters and gatherers lived a much better life than during most of recorded history.

Then why did we stop being hunter-gatherers?

eitland• 7 years ago

Could be that there is a kind of developmental switch. If life is tough as a child, it makes sense to speed up development to improve odds of survival.

Sounds reasonable. In crowded waters fish start to mature at a much younger age.

Source: studied farming and a non trivial part of the curriculum was related to taking care of fishing and hunting resources.

yorwba• 7 years ago

I agree that the framing of low socioeconomic status and traumatic experiences as anormal is questionable when the absence of these influences is the real anomaly. On the other hand, normal doesn't imply good and mere survival is a pretty low bar for quality of life. You probably wouldn't abandon your children in a warzone so they can have a more normal childhood.

pjc50• 7 years ago

Far fewer people did. Dead children were routine, as were deaths in childhood. The Black Death killed half the population of Europe; the PTSD must have been horrific for the survivors.

Trying to remove childhood sources of traumatic stress is like trying to ensure your child reaches adulthood with all their teeth and no broken bones. It won't affect their survival but it will improve their life.

ekianjo• 7 years ago

There is a middle ground though. Sheltering your kids too much will make them fragile and unable to cope with actual adversity as adults.

scotty797• 7 years ago

How did we ever survive?

We kinda barely did.

When all those humans that as children expeirienced "low SES and high TES" sat on then fruits of industrial revolution we got two world wars. Heck, we were close to nuclear holocaust thanks to f'ed up kids. Lower IQ makes you more susceptible to getting violent (childhoood lead exposure vs crime).

That Flynn effect? Could be just result of not messing up our kids so much anymore.

TelmoMenezes• 7 years ago

life was hardship and adversity

Life was certainly hard in ways that it is not now, but it was definitely hard in the precise ways that we evolved to cope with.

You had to worry a lot about obtaining food and shelter, and protecting yourself from predators and enemy tribes. You also had vast amounts of time for playing, contemplating, dancing, cooking, having sex, drinking some of the weird concoctions made by the local shaman that made you see things differently. All of this.

I am not sure I would be able to forego antibiotics, anesthesia and modern medicine in general, but for those not assuming this, I wonder how nice or lives of 24/7 stress and isolation would look like to our more primitive ancestors.

Our lives are potentially longer, but are they more worth living? I'm not pretending to have an answer, but I do think the question is valid.

Hendrikto• 7 years ago

The study suggests that it makes sense for parents and anyone involved in raising a child to try and shield or protect the child from exposure to adversity.

I have repeatedly witnessed parents doing this, and their children inevitable became incapable entitled brats.

scotty797• 7 years ago

But when they turn out 30 they might just figure out how to make the cancer medicine you'll need by then.

The goal of raising children is not having good children but having good adults.

mellowdream• 7 years ago

Early puberty is linked to shorter adult height. A vicious cycle of poor genetic profiles eliminating themselves via offspring from the gene pool after natural selection?

new26282• 7 years ago

I don't know how to put it politely, but you may be creating a problem out of nothing. If you didn't know you had a traumatic childhood, then most likely you didn't have one. No families are perfect and most parents try to do best they can, occasionally failing. Growing up is not without problems, and things turn out mostly OK most of the time. Not knowing your specifics it sounds like you try to find someone to blame and try to find some exotic condition you can identify with. " did not validate my emotions at all growing up " -- what about giving life to you and feeding you though? What does "validating emotions" even mean. I encourage you to let this resentment go and move on with life.

HiroshiSan• 7 years ago

"if you didn't know you had a traumatic childhood, then most likely you didn't have one."

Not sure I follow this logic.

screye• 7 years ago

My guess is that most parents do a bad job when compared to the platonic ideal of a parent people may think others have.

The implication being, that if one got through childhood without immediately obvious signs of abuse/neglect then their childhood may not have been as bad they think.

I grew up in the most liberal/educated part of my country and us children would laugh at lunch time about how getting beaten by a belt was so much better than a hanger.

Daily home rules were stricter than what western kids go through when grounded and saying no to their orders was not even an option. (for most)

I grew being occasional beaten by hand and stick. Strict rules were the norm and I never had sleepovers at friends or the like. But, my family allowed me to choose my career, they made huge sacrifices for me, and above all genuinely loved me.

The physical beatings and restriction on freedoms would have gotten CPS called on them in the west. But, I personally have a great great relationship with them and honestly, think I had pretty good parents as compared to my country's average.

People underestimate how many children get a shitty childhood. I will take my imperfect parents over what many of my peers had.

dang3• 7 years ago

I'm sure you didn't intend it this way, but this comment crosses into personal attack, which breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067793 and marked it off-topic.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu• 7 years ago

I really don't see how it's a personal attack.

muterad_murilax• 7 years ago

"What does 'validating emotions' even mean?"

To an empathic person, that should be pretty obvious...

0815test4• 7 years ago

What does "validating emotions" even mean.

It's a bit of a misnomer for the process of explicitly acknowledging the emotions that someone else might be feeling, trying to understand the causes of that inner feeling, and prioritizing that acknowledgement and understanding over any subsequent claims as to whether that emotion is unjustified.

Saying things like "You're wrong to feel X, because Y!" is corrosive to trust; it leaves our counterparty in doubt as to whether we even care in the least that they felt X in the first place, or might care in the future about any similar situation. "Validating" X means explicitly giving up that option of attacking their feelings in such strong terms - as such, it's a subtle part of day-to-day diplomacy, especially among people who don't trust each other all that much! And the good part is that, once one has achieved that validation, talking effectively about Y only becomes all-the-easier!

Added - do you think that children always trust their parents to pursue something close to their best interest, and to never victimize them? Parent-on-child abuse of various sorts is a thing, too. And the parent-child relationship doesn't even start off with that kind of trust. Many kids routinely engage in what we would regard as e.g. pathological lying and gaslighting, if adults did the same thing; we only get to think of such behavior as humorous because they aren't very good at it. They do generally grow out of such things as their moral development leads them to internalize the notions of affective empathy and, yes, trust.

Dylan168073• 7 years ago

especially among people who don't trust each other all that much

Doesn't that imply it should be of minimum importance in a parent-child relationship?

ganzuul• 7 years ago

Don't judge them too harshly. They may have done much better than what their parents managed in turn, and not too long ago food and shelter was all that people had time for.

I don't think Western society is ready to bring up children without some kind of major problem for decades still. School kids right now commonly suffer from existential crisis due to climate change.

tsss• 7 years ago

They should judge them harshly. If you are unfit as a parent, then you shouldn't have children. It's that simple.

Dylan168073• 7 years ago

It's not like you can just tell if you're fit.

ryandrake• 7 years ago

School kids right now commonly suffer from existential crisis due to climate change.

Wait, what? You can’t just drop that one in there at the end without some follow up! I know Climate Change is the current boogeyman that’s causing all sorts of bad things, but now it’s causing mental health problems? Is there anything Climate Change can’t do?

CydeWeys3• 7 years ago

It's not a "boogeyman". The boogeyman isn't real. Climate change is. We are currently on track to destroy this world within the lifetimes of people who are already born.

pizza• 7 years ago

Climate change is this generation’s duck and cover but instead of being burnt to crisp within seconds its over a course of decades. And I mean that they are the same not in the sense that it may or may not be something worth having a daily existential crisis over, but rather, today’s kids are being drilled by today’s adults that yesterday’s adults have caused this looming threat they are helpless to do anything about. It’s pretty unsurprising this will cause some mental anguish in children.

School shootings probably have a similar effect on children’s mental health, too.

dang3• 7 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067793 and marked it off-topic.

nashashmi2• 7 years ago

There is something funny about the way this article portrays early brain development.

Ask families with relatives in lean world countries who visit those countries often and they will tell you that those kids mature far more quickly than the kids here. And they see it as a positive impact. And lament how children in America do not mature as quickly. Foreign kids who come here to study do better than the kids who are from here.

Yet adversity in the article is portrayed negatively. And further, faster brain development is portrayed negatively. Then early puberty is portrayed negatively. And it is all tied together with the statement that there is more depression, anxiety and psychosis.

Mind you but those traumatic experiences become so when you are taken from a world of high stress where everyone grows up like you do to a world more relaxed where people are different from you.

Think PTSD soldiers finding it difficult to live at home. But ok to live back in war country. Think martial arts training you to be defensive and then going back to a world with only peace.

It is not the high stress that causes the trauma but rather how different life becomes when you change gears back to peace.

I will always remember the quote from the Walking Dead. Until war is over, we are just walking dead.

vanderZwan• 7 years ago

Yet adversity in the article is portrayed negatively.

Well, there is "adversity", and there is the sexual abuse and other trauma that the article is talking about.

nashashmi2• 7 years ago

I don't find that in the article. It keeps mentioning poverty and socioeconomic conditions and refugee situations.

CydeWeys3• 7 years ago

they will tell you that those kids mature far more quickly than the kids here. And they see it as a positive impact.

This may well not be true, though. Humans as a species mature much more slowly to adulthood than other similarly sized species, e.g. deer become full-blown adults and start reproducing inside of two years. One of the reasons we mature more slowly is it takes a lot of time to grow and train larger brains.

It's not clear to me that shortening this cycle and forcing maturation as quickly as possible is a good thing.

scotty797• 7 years ago

And they see it as a positive impact.

It looks positive from the perspective of a parent because he sees it as faster acquisition of skills he himself already possesses.

But it might be negative if because of that faster development kids will never have a chance of achieving some skills their parents don't even dream of possessing because their brains got pruned way too soon.

ip26• 7 years ago

Early puberty certainly seems like a negative if by "early" we're talking about seven year olds, which happens.

kuzehanka2• 7 years ago

Why is it 'premature' brain development? This seems to have picked a particular lens to interpret the results.

I grew up in a European country and moved to a developed western nation at age 10. The first few years of school were a really jarring experience because the kids in my class were infantile and mentally under-developed compared to where I came from. This was also reflected in a huge gap in curriculum, we were covering skills that were taught 2-3 years earlier where I came from. Parents in western nations infantalise their children and prevent them from developing autonomy/responsibility for far too long. It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home.

A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.

layoutIfNeeded2• 7 years ago

it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home

W-what? I remember babysitting my 6 year old brother since the age of 8 while my parents were working.

Sharlin3• 7 years ago

It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home.

That certainly sounds ridiculous, speaking as someone born and raised in a developed western nation.

kuzehanka2• 7 years ago

"If a person who has the lawful care or charge of a child under 12 years, leaves the child for an unreasonable time without making reasonable provision for the supervision and care of the child commits a misdemeanour.

Maximum penalty – 3 years imprisonment."

Legislation: Queensland Criminal Code Act 1899 (QLD) - Section 364A

sonnyblarney7• 7 years ago

"I grew up in a European country and moved to a developed western nation at age 10. "

European countries are 'Western nations'.

tenaciousDaniel2• 7 years ago

op could've meant Eastern Europe.

sonnyblarney7• 7 years ago

For those who are having difficulty with the concept, have a look at Wikipedia entry [1]

'The West' is referenced from basically central Asia, a term devised before the 'discovery' of the New World. The term generally includes 'new world' countries that are founded by 'old world' Western countries.

This is an old term, but it's used ubiquitously today, this is not a contentious subject.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

Alex3917• 7 years ago

A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.

Because in most species, reproducing takes a lot of effort so organisms don't get ready to reproduce until the last possible moment. E.g. fungi don't produce mushrooms the first couple years they're in a new pile of woodchips even though there is more than enough mycelium already, it's not until there are only a couple more years of woodchips left that they will produce mushrooms.

Reedx• 7 years ago

Right, that hasn't done kids any favors.

Parents who treat their children as if they are fragile (for example, by keeping them away from dirt and potential allergens, such as peanuts) are depriving their children’s immature immune systems of the learning experiences those systems need to develop their maximum protective capacity.

Children’s social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them “safe” from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions, we deprive them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/10/by-mol...

saulrh• 7 years ago

  Why is it 'premature' brain development? This seems
  to have picked a particular lens to interpret the results.

From TFA:

  The researchers found specific associations of SES and
  TSE with psychiatric symptoms, cognitive performance,
  and several brain structure abnormalities.

We know that these brains are developing prematurely rather than differently because they are flat-out worse. Adversity is not the same as meaning or experience. I'm sure that lack of meaning causes problems, and we do need to provide opportunity for growth, but that's not what the article is talking about. Lack of trauma or chronic stress permits the brain to develop the way it evolved to, and brains that develop the way they evolved to are more performant, more stable, and inclined toward more effective habits and behaviors.

SmokeGS• 7 years ago

I have been thinking abou this for a long time. Thanks for putting it out there. It seemed that int the domestic crop of people, the US lags behind some/most places in the maturity department.

wolfspider• 7 years ago

Kids growing up in poverty just have to grow up faster and those outcomes are a strain on their mental health. Consider they are born with a mission to “save the whole family” early on without the tools to do it. That is much more pressure than just going to school every day if they are even privileged enough to go to school. That may sound shocking but with technology (online correspondence classes) and looser “home schooling” laws you now have a generation of kids which just didn’t receive education at all. Schools are more strict towards social behavior and I have met more young people that tell me they were expelled from school at the age of 13 than ever before. So, how do you “save the family” now? I truly wish these kids got the second chances I received growing up to redeem themselves but they don’t. The resulting survival mechanisms they are forced into really blur the lines of wrong and right. It’s really more than I can sum up in a single comment but something is going to need to be done here in the US about this.

RandomInteger4• 7 years ago

Premature brain development likely means that the pruning stage of brain development occurred too early and too rapidly.

That or the brain formed too many connections too rapidly before the pruning stage.

Either way, the very structure of the brain is borked.

Not a neuroscientist though so take my input with a grain of salt.

nabla92• 7 years ago

Childhood adversity and abuse has been linked to decreased trust, low impulse control, violence, learning problems, promiscuous sexual behaviour etc. before.

One way to look at this is damage caused by stress and stress hormones.

Some of the traits above may be evolutionary adaption strategy. Growing in chronic stress environment requires different traits. The limbic system may have plan B when it's flooded with stress hormones constantly. Long term thinking and planning is less valuable when the life expectancy is low.

sonnyblarney7• 7 years ago

"One way to look at this is damage caused by stress and stress hormones"

Another way is simply learning by example.

"Daddy said don't ever trust nobody, they always tryin' to get ya" (and maybe it's true in some communities) ... well it makes sense.

Or else "My father always said to just trust people, and they'll trust you back" - which also may be true for other communities.

The variables: physical/genetic, family experience, and community experience I think all add up.

I don't have the ref by I remember reading that poor kids who simply moved to a 'better neighbourhood' did a lot better in life, normalizing for everything else.

nabla92• 7 years ago

Learning is not just mental process that changes the arrangement of neurons. It can cause epigenetic changes. Inflammation persisting up to adulthood might be learned from example. They may be mitotically and/or meiotically heritable at least to some degree.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/dvdy.24211

0815test4• 7 years ago

"Daddy said don't ever trust nobody, they always tryin' to get ya" ... Or else "My father always said to just trust people, and they'll trust you back"

But in fact, both of these are wrong! Our ability to fully develop affective empathy, and thus to intuitively and effectively strive for win-win outcomes in the way that's constantly required of us by any modern society, is critically reliant on a basic foundation of intuitive trust; on the other hand, "just" trusting anyone with no fall-back of any sort simply invites abuse by unscrupulous or even actively malicious (i.e. socially predatory to the point of dysfunction, without even the most cursory interest in - or for that matter, the understanding of - the wellbeing of those they interact with!) actors, and might even leave us utterly unable to effectively counter such abuse even when we can acknowledge that trust has, in fact, failed. The one effective policy is "trust but verify", and with the right attitude it can work in a wide range of communities!

scotty797• 7 years ago

I don't have the ref by I remember reading that poor kids who simply moved to a 'better neighbourhood' did a lot better in life, normalizing for everything else.

If poverty causes brain damage it's probably irreversible. If you don't transfer child fast enough then it won't do as good in the better environment as children that grew up in there.

nudq• 7 years ago

The racially and economically diverse cohort

We already know that the races differ in speed of maturation and various measures of adversity. Was race controlled for? (Paper is paywalled for me.)

Questionmarkme• 7 years ago

This is very culturally specific. Childhood itself is a social construct, some cultures treat childhood very differently with various outcomes. It seems that this is one interpretation of the study results and by no means applicable to children globally. Psychology parades as a science of humanity, but in reality results are often strictly limited to the sample or population of interest. 'abnormal' development in place A may be normal in place B. Or normal under circumstance X. Researchers do their best to make sense of their data within their own cultural framework of thinking and experience.

It makes sense for difficult experience to mature the brain, that's how our neural networks strengthen. It makes sense to develop in response to adversity in order to overcome it again in the future. I would suspect the links to mental health conditions are due to another culturally constructed aspect of Western society. I.e. Mental unwellness is as much to do with how people respond to us as it is to do with any difference in brain function. The social world shapes our brain. If I withdraw from society for a while that may change some of my brain function but when I stop withdrawing and someone treats me a certain way that has another influence on my brain function. This latter influence may well be more influential that the effect of my original withdrawal. Therefore it's often difficult to firmly state that a difference in brain structure or function is due to X, when X is intrinsically related to Y, Z (and the whole alphabet).

We know that adversity is linked to mental health and therefore it must be related to brain changes. What we don't know is how exactly.if this is a beneficial evolutionary response - probably - that is almost inappropriate to a western society then it's not the evolutionary response that is problematic, it's the societal response to it.

armenarmen• 7 years ago

Is this linked to relative poverty? Being the poor kid in a rich neighborhood/country?

Or real "there isn't enough food today" style poverty

scotty797• 7 years ago

I have a sad feeling that what we called adult brain is just hollowed out, scarred husk of desirable human brain and people who really develop our technology (and in result society) are mostly individuals that by some genetic and environmental accident managed to retain bits of their child brains.

Childhood Adversity Linked to Earlier Puberty, Premature Brain Development

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