2023-11-15 14:09:27
Scientists from Ohio State University have found that stress experienced in childhood can be more dangerous than a blow to the head and changes the level of genes in the brain. Report on this published in Medical Xpress, and the team also presented these data at the Society for Neuroscience Neuroscience 2023 annual meeting.
It is known that head injuries in children, in particular those resulting from falls, can affect a person’s social behavior in the future, as well as cause sudden changes in mood. A team of researchers found that excess stress caused by negative experiences in childhood can also increase the risk of mental illness and substance abuse in adulthood.
Experiments on rats have shown that early life stress may have much more serious health consequences than previously thought. They found this out in the following way: for 14 days, the researchers temporarily removed newborn babies from their mothers to cause stress in them. On day 15, some of the anesthetized rats suffered a head injury similar to a concussion. At the same time, part of the control group experienced the stress of separation from their mother, while others did not. Next, the scientists studied changes in gene expression in the hippocampus region of the animals’ brains.
The results were as follows: stress itself, as well as in combination with traumatic brain injury, activates pathways in the excitatory and inhibitory neurons of the brain, which are associated with its plasticity or ability to adapt to changes in external factors. Most likely, this suggests that the brain is preparing for new episodes of trauma and is actively changing to do so, which can have lifelong consequences as a result.
In addition, both stress and a blow to the head affected oxytocin-related signaling in rats: stress alone and in combination with trauma activated the hormone, but traumatic brain injury without stress suppressed it.
Briefly regarding what conclusions the scientists came to: experimental subjects exposed to stress in childhood were more prone to risky behavior. This is similar to existing evidence that people who experience early life stress have an increased risk of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and substance use.
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