Maternal support in early childhood predicts larger hippocampal volumes at school age

Abstract

Early maternal support has been shown to promote specific gene expression, neurogenesis, adaptive stress responses, and larger hippocampal volumes in developing animals. In humans, a relationship between psychosocial factors in early childhood and later amygdala volumes based on prospective data has been demonstrated, providing a key link between early experience and brain development. Although much retrospective data suggests a link between early psychosocial factors and hippocampal volumes in humans, to date there has been no prospective data to inform this potentially important public health issue. In a longitudinal study of depressed and healthy preschool children who underwent neuroimaging at school age, we investigated whether early maternal support predicted later hippocampal volumes. Maternal support observed in early childhood was strongly predictive of hippocampal volume measured at school age. The positive effect of maternal support on hippocampal volumes was greater in nondepressed children. These findings provide prospective evidence in humans of the positive effect of early supportive parenting on healthy hippocampal development, a brain region key to memory and stress modulation.depression | parental support | nurturance | neurodevelopment

Mother nurture and the social definition of neurodevelopment

“…Multiple subregions of the hippocampus, including those that were the focus of the Rao et al study, show increasing volume through to early adolescence, followed by a decrease in volume (14). Thus, an inverse correlation between parental nurturance in early childhood and smaller hippocampal volume in adolescence might reflect an accelerated maturation that is actually consistent with the findings of Luby et al (1,19), as well as the increased hippocampal volume at earlier periods in development (Fig. 1).…”

“…However, children in this earlier study (19) were imaged earlier in development than those in the Rao et al study (4). Multiple subregions of the hippocampus, including those that were the focus of the Rao et al study, show increasing volume through to early adolescence, followed by a decrease in volume (14).…”

“…nurturance predicted smaller hippocampal volume in adolescence, a finding seemingly at odds with that of Luby et al (1) and an earlier paper from this group (19) reporting that maternal support positively associated with hippocampal volume. However, children in this earlier study (19) were imaged earlier in development than those in the Rao et al study (4).…”

The Role and Sources of Individual Differences in Critical-Analytic Thinking: a Capsule Overview

“…Low SES has been linked to worse performance on measures of componential cognitive skills, including EF (Crook and Evans 2014;Mezzacappa 2004) and language (Noble et al 2005(Noble et al , 2007. Brain structure differences have also been observed between low and middle SES children and adults, with individuals from lower SES backgrounds demonstrating less cortical gray matter and smaller hippocampi (Jednoróg et al 2012;Lawson et al 2013;Luby et al 2012;Noble et al 2012). There is also evidence that the language network is less leftlateralized in lower SES children (Raizada et al 2008).…”

“…Moderate stress can be beneficial, making a person more resilient in the long term (Lyons et al 2010). High levels of stress can be tolerable in the presence of "stress buffers" such as social support and a sense of control over the stress (Chen et al 2011;Luby et al 2012;Malecki and Demaray 2006). Unfortunately, chronic, unbuffered, uncontrollable stress (i.e., "toxic stress") can be devastating for brain development (Shonkoff 2012).…”