Stress makes brains of small kids mature faster

Study shows children subjected to stress in early life show brain changes faster as adolescents

It has been the staple of Bollywood films for long – how difficult childhood situations make people adults before time – think “fenke huye paise nahin uthata” in Deewar.

Now research has confirmed that faster maturity because of early childhood stress is not just a part of Bollywood potboilers. A long term study conducted by researchers of Radboud University shows that stress in early childhood leads to faster maturation of certain brain regions during adolescence.

Stress due to negative experiences during childhood , such as illness or divorce, appears to be related to faster maturation of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala in adolescence

In contrast, stress experienced later in life leads to slower maturation of the adolescent brain. This is the outcome of a study in which 37 subjects have been monitored for almost 20 years. The findings were published in Scientific Reports.

In 1998, the group – which then comprised 129 one-year-olds and their parents – was tested for the first time. Over the past 20 years, researchers studied, inter alia, their play sessions and interactions with parents, friends and classmates.

The children were also subjected to MRI scans. This wealth of data has enabled Karin Roelofs, Professor of Experimental Psychopathology, her PhD student Anna Tyborowska and other colleagues of Radboud University to investigate how stress in various life stages affected the adolescent brain of these children.

The researchers investigated two types of stressors – negative life events and negative influences from the social environment – in two life stages of their subjects: early childhood (0-5 years) and adolescence (14-17 years). They related these stress levels to the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus. These brain regions play an important role in functioning in social and emotional situations and are known to be sensitive to stress.

Stress due to negative experiences during childhood , such as illness or divorce, appears to be related to faster maturation of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala in adolescence. However, stress resulting from a negative social environment during adolescence, such as low peer esteem at school, is connected to slower maturation of the brain area hippocampus and another part of the prefrontal cortex.

“Unfortunately, in this study we can’t say with certainty that stress causes these effects. However, based on animal studies we can hypothesize that these mechanisms are indeed causal,’ Anna Tyborowska says.