Patterns of eating and drinking in socially-isolated rhesus monkeys

Eating disturbance and sexual trauma in childhood and adulthood

“…However, nearly 93% of the child abuse subjects stated that the abuse preceded any eating disorder behavior. Furthermore, animal data indicate that early traumatic experiences in primates cause pervasive psychobiological, affective, and impulsive behavioral disturbances (Kraemer, 1992;vanderKolk, 1987), as well as binge eating behavior (Miller, Caul, & Mirsky, 1971), which further support the concept that trauma may increase the risk of these behaviors in humans, at least in a significant number of cases. Future studies with prospective longitudinal designs that include children as subjects would clarify greatly this area of study.…”

Relationship of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Eating Disturbance in Children

“…The idea that childhood trauma produces marked changes in psychobiological processes (e.g., Field, 1985;Kraemer, 1992;Putnam and Trickett, 1997;vanderKolk, 1987) and neurotransmitter functioning (Charney et al, 1993;Post et al, 1994;Putnam and Trickett, 1997;vanderKolk, 1987), which are associated with eating behavior (Brewerton, 1995), has previously been considered (i.e., Wonderlich et al, 1997). Also, research on nonhuman primates indicates that following early traumatic experiences, rhesus monkeys display dysregulated eating episodes but do not gain commensurate body weight, suggesting both feeding dysregulation and metabolic changes may be associated with trauma (Miller et al, 1971). In human children, more complex causal pathways may be precipitated by trauma, which include a variety of psychopathological states (e.g., affective, dissociative) and serve to mediate the relationship between the traumatic experience and later disturbed eating.…”

Psychoendocrine Responses of Mother and Infant Monkeys to Disturbance and Separation

“…When these deficiencies are viewed in conjunction with the findings from learning studies, it is apparent that the absence of mothering in surrogate-reared infants can also have a general influence on emotionality. Early rearing without social partners results in performance difficulties on learning tasks involving variable stimuli and response inhibition (Sackett, 1970;Gluck, 1979), excessive eating and drinking even under non disturbed conditions (Miller, Caul, & Mirsky, 1971), and alterations in adrenal responses to novel situations (Ruppenthal & Sackett, 1979). Although these studies amply demonstrate the importance of mother-infant interactions, it should be mentioned that some primate species, such as the squirrel monkey and the pigtail macaque, appear to be less severely affected than the rhesus macaque when reared without mothers (Kaplan, 1977).…”