Infant Stress Affects Teen Brain

For some girls, stressful experiences in the first year of life seem to drive hormonal changes later in childhood. And these chemical changes, in turn, lead to abnormal brain connectivity and signs of anxiety and depression at age 18, suggests a study published today in Nature Neuroscience.Researchers have long known that stress early in life is a risk factor for a host of psychological and physical problems, from mood disorders and substance abuse to obesity and cardiovascular disease. The new study proposes that for some individuals, childhood experiences permanently alter the way the body and brain cope with stress.“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.Read more at...Nature, November 2012.