Scientific advances in human biology may soon have a profound bearing on the policies that governments and organizations adopt towards young mothers, caregivers and babies in poor and stressed communities.
There is an emerging body of scientific evidence to show that the environment in which a very young baby develops is pivotal in shaping its brain in ways that can significantly influence its chances in later life.
“Toxic stress”, depicting a relentless cycle of stress inflicted on a child whose parents may be battling to survive, unable to nurture it properly; or where there may be violence, neglect and/or poor nutrition, can result in negative patterning on the baby’s brain that can inhibit intellectual and emotional growth and hamper his or her chances of success. This negative imprint, just like a positive imprint, gets handed down from one generation to the next.
University of Cape Town-affiliated neurobiologist, Barak Morgan, says: “We have known for a long time that early childhood is very important, but now science is telling us exactly how important it is.” Whereas educational policies tend to stress the importance of the early school years, the new science suggests that the birth to three-year time frame could be the most cost-effective and critical period for intervention in a child’s life.
In a paper entitled, “Biological embedding of early childhood adversity: Toxic stress and the vicious cycle of poverty in South Africa”, Morgan explains how signals from the environment are known to add permanent “epigenetic marks” onto DNA during sensitive periods of early brain development – both before and after birth. Then a period of resistance settles in, where it becomes very difficult to change these pathways. It is not known exactly when all of these brief, sensitive windows occur, but the first two to three years in a child’s life are critical for him or her to acquire emotional self-regulation skills that make the difference between failure and success later in life.
Spare the rod
Groundbreaking research by Canadian Michael Meany several years ago on lab rats showed that the amount of licking and grooming the baby rats received in their first days of life determined their responses to stress.
Those that received minimal licking and grooming were primed to survive their environment with “flight or fight” responses” by having more epigenetic marks on the brain’s major stress gene. Pups that were licked and groomed adequately, regardless of whether by their biological mother or a surrogate mother, had less of these marks, which made them resilient to stress and primed to thrive. Later studies on humans, also in Canada, showed that the brains of suicide victims had more epigenetic marks, similar to those of the poorly nurtured rat pups.
“The shape and impact of these pathways are sculpted in a once-off way during early development when environmental influences, as mediated by parental care, are most deeply embedded in offspring biology,” Morgan writes. Crucially, the epigenetic marks hamper the development of more sophisticated, flexible “top down” brain functioning that is associated with strong self-regulation and the ability to thrive, as distinguished from more reflex, survival-oriented, “bottom up” brain functioning.
http://womennewsnetwork.net/2014/06/09/young-mothers-living-poverty-toxic-stress-violence/
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