Neural Adaptation: The Biology of Connectedness - Full text

"Our brain cells, or neurons, have a remarkable capacity to connect, disconnect, and reconnect in response to every experience we have. If our childhoods are dangerous or chaotic, our brain cells connect to each other in networks that increase our conscious and unconscious focus on survival. Brain images illustrate these changes and highlight the problems that result – problems that make healthy connections difficult to establish. These changes are helpful when our lives are in danger; we survive and sometimes experience profound, if limited, connections with people who share the danger we are in. For example, combat soldiers often develop deep connections with each other, but have trouble making healthy connections with other people when they come home. They become hyper-vigilant and highly reactive, a condition we call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). People with PTSD have a different neurological capacity for connection than ‘normal’ people. These changes affect more than the individual who experiences them. Parents with PTSD pass on genetic and epigenetic changes that increase the ability of their children to survive in a dangerous world and frequently, if unintentionally, replicate aspects of the dangerous environments they grew up in. Children who grow up in dangerous environments have a much higher risk of developing PTSD, high risk behaviours and a wide range of mental and medical illnesses. The more focus they (and we) need to survive, the more we lose the neural connections that facilitate connection with ourselves and others. Exposure to positive forms of connection with ourselves and each other can build and strengthen our neural capacity for it...."

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