Stress in early childhood leads to faster development of the brain

The children were also subjected to MRI scans. This wealth of data has enabled Karin Roelofs, Professor of Experimental Psychopathology, her PhD student Anna Tyborowska and other colleagues of Radboud University to investigate how stress in various life stages affected the adolescent brain of these children.

They related these stress levels to the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus. These brain regions play an important role in functioning in social and emotional situations and are known to be sensitive to stress.

However, stress resulting from a negative social environment during adolescence, such as low peer esteem at school, is connected to slower maturation of the brain area hippocampus and another part of the prefrontal cortex.

‘Unfortunately, in this study we can’t say with certainty that stress causes these effects. However, based on animal studies we can hypothesize that these mechanisms are indeed causal,’ 

Anna Tyborowska says.

In other words, the brain become “mature” too soon.’ The researchers were surprised to find, however, that social stress later in life seems to lead to slower maturation during adolescence.

Tyborowska: ‘What makes this interesting is that a stronger effect of stress on the brain also increases the risk of developing antisocial personality traits’.

Radboud University Nijmegen