Rethinking Concepts and Categories for Understanding the Neurodevelopmental Effects of Childhood Adversity

Smith, Karen E.; Pollak, Seth D.

doi:10.1177/1745691620920725

Cited by 230 publications

(278 citation statements)

References 266 publications

(376 reference statements)

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“…These factors include the presence of enduring stressors such as ambient noise (including background noise such as that associated with ongoing and unmonitored television), persistent household chaos, recurring conflicts among family members, exposure to environmental toxins, parental stress, and neighborhood violence – any of which might possibly alter physiologic systems involved in stress regulation, comfort, and perceived security/stability (Coley, Lynch & Kull, 2015; Deater-Deckard, Sewell, Petrill & Thompson, 2010; Evans & Kim, 2013; Hair, Hanson, Wolfe, & Pollak, 2015; Miller & Chen, 2013). Thus, there may be numerous (and not mutually exclusive) potential chronic effects on neural activity that can influence brain and behavioral development (McEwen & Gianaros, 2010; Smith & Pollak, 2020). For these reasons, the use and integration of a variety of behavioral, cognitive, and neuroscience measures permits researchers to better understand exactly how and why poverty reduces the potential of children.…”

Section: How Might New Scientific Approaches Help?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Besides specific skills relevant to children's healthy development, functional neuroimaging has potential to reveal the general processes through which early adverse experiences might affect children's learning (Smith & Pollak, 2020). By indexing fluctuations of neural activity, neuroimaging allows for an examination of the processes through which children acquire new information or skills rather than a focus solely on the outcome of learning (Karuza, Emberson, & Aslin, 2014).…”

Section: Leverage a Culture That Values Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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How developmental neuroscience can help address the problem of child poverty

Pollak

Wolfe

2020

Dev Psychopathol

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Nearly 1 in 5 children in the United States lives in a household whose income is below the official federal poverty line, and more than 40% of children live in poor or near-poor households. Research on the effects of poverty on children's development has been a focus of study for many decades and is now increasing as we accumulate more evidence about the implications of poverty. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently added “Poverty and Child Health” to its Agenda for Children to recognize what has now been established as broad and enduring effects of poverty on child development. A recent addition to the field has been the application of neuroscience-based methods. Various techniques including neuroimaging, neuroendocrinology, cognitive psychophysiology, and epigenetics are beginning to document ways in which early experiences of living in poverty affect infant brain development. We discuss whether there are truly worthwhile reasons for adding neuroscience and related biological methods to study child poverty, and how might these perspectives help guide developmentally based and targeted interventions and policies for these children and their families.

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Section: How Might New Scientific Approaches Help?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Leverage a Culture That Values Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

How developmental neuroscience can help address the problem of child poverty

Pollak

Wolfe

2020

Dev Psychopathol

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“…These and related negative experiences have been referred to using different umbrella terms, such as "early life stress", "child trauma", "toxic stress", "early adversity", and "adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)". There remains debate about how to think about the interrelations between these different experiences, when to consider the phenomenology of specific adversities, and what might still be open questions in understanding the effects of stress (for additional discussion, see (Smith and Pollak, 2020), as well as (McLaughlin et al, 2020). An initial and still unanswered question is whether to think about these experiences as unique stressors or to lump adversities together.…”

Section: Defining Early Life Adversity and Reviewing Connections Betwmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Related to these ideas, starting frameworks (Belsky et al, 2012;McLaughlin et al, 2014a) argue for the difference between dimensions of adversity (i.e., harshness versus unpredictability; deprivation versus threat;). In this space, there are multiple in-depth reviews about this topic (e.g., (McLaughlin et al, 2020;Smith and Pollak, 2020) and we would direct readers to those past publications for more in-depth discussion. Here, we take a more broad and inclusive definition of ELA.…”

Section: Defining Early Life Adversity and Reviewing Connections Betwmentioning

confidence: 99%

Amygdala Allostasis and Early Life Adversity: Considering Excitotoxicity and Inescapability in the Sequelae of Stress

Hanson¹,

Nacewicz²

2020

Preprint

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Early life adversity (ELA), such as child maltreatment or child poverty, engenders problems with emotional and behavioral regulation. In the quest to understand the neurobiological sequelae and mechanisms of risk, the amygdala has been of major focus. While the basic functions of this region make it a strong candidate for understanding the multiple mental health issues common after ELA, extant literature is marked by profound inconsistencies, with reports of larger, smaller, and no differences in regional volumes of this area. We believe integrative models of stress neurodevelopment, grounded in “allostatic load”, will help resolve inconsistencies in the impact of ELA on the amygdala. In this review, we attempt to connect past research studies to new findings with animal models of cellular and neurotransmitter mediators of stress buffering to extreme fear generalization onto testable research and clinical concepts. Drawing on the greater impact of inescapability over unpredictability in animal models, we propose a mechanism by which ELA aggravates an exhaustive cycle of amygdala expansion and subsequent toxic-metabolic damage. We connect this neurobiological sequela to psychosocial mal/adaptation after ELA, bridging to behavioral studies of attachment, emotion processing, and social functioning. Lastly, we conclude this review by proposing a multitude of future directions in preclinical work and studies of humans that suffered ELA.

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“…Deprivation-based adversities entail significant deviations from species-specific experiences that are required for typical mental and physical development including poverty, emotional neglect, and institutionalization. Though other types of adversity are likely, and other ways of carving up the space plausible (see Smith & Pollak, 2020), there is considerable evidence to support the threat-deprivation distinction.…”

Section: Part 2 Type Timing Term and Toxicity Of Acesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Early Life Adversity Transforms the Learning Brain

Hauser¹

2020

Mind Brain and Education

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For educators to help children exposed to adverse life experiences, it is necessary to understand how adversity impacts different mechanisms of learning, emotion, and planning as these capacities underpin success in schools and beyond. The goal of this paper is to review essential findings on how early life adversity transforms the brain which, in turn, impacts educational outcomes. Part 1 begins by discussing the species-specific and expectant experiences that guide typical development, and then turns to early life adversities and their relationship to both physical and mental health outcomes. Part 2 summarizes four dimensions of adversity-type, timing, term, and toxicity-and how each differentially impacts the developing brain, including individual differences in psychopathology. Part 3 discusses the relevance of these findings for educators, highlighting how behavior can be modified to build resilience and greater academic and social-emotional competency. Throughout the world, children experience adversity, including emotional and physical neglect, poverty, war, physical and sexual abuse, family dysfunction and mental health problems (Asmundson & Afifi, 2020; Blum, Li, & Naranjo-Rivera, 2019). Analyses of data from the World Health Organization suggest that close to 40% of all children have experienced one or more types of adversity before the age of 18 years, with little difference between highand low-income countries (Kessler et al., 2010). Bellis et al. (2019) estimate that the total annual cost of such adverse childhood experiences is $748 billion in Europe and $581 billion in North America. Some individuals respond to such adversity with internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Adversity, in this sense, entails situations in which there are atypical environmental perturbations that are serious or severe, often chronic, and necessitate significant adaptive responses (McLaughlin, 2016). As Nelson, Bhutta,

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Rethinking Concepts and Categories for Understanding the Neurodevelopmental Effects of Childhood Adversity

Cited by 230 publications

References 266 publications

How developmental neuroscience can help address the problem of child poverty

How developmental neuroscience can help address the problem of child poverty

Amygdala Allostasis and Early Life Adversity: Considering Excitotoxicity and Inescapability in the Sequelae of Stress

How Early Life Adversity Transforms the Learning Brain

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