Gee, D., Gabard-Durnam, L., Flannery, J., Goff, B., Humphreys, K., & Telzer, E. et al. (2013). Early developmental emergence of human amygdala-prefrontal connectivity after maternal deprivation. Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, 110(39), 15638-15643. Web.
Gee et al. (2013) have addressed the effect of maternal deprivation on human brain development. The authors focused on how maternal deprivation alters the normal growth and development of the human brain. Under normal circumstances, a child is born with immature medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) connections with the amygdala. The amygdala- mPFC develops as the child grows, becoming more mature during adolescence and fully developed in adulthood. In their study, Gee et al. (2013) used two groups; children who grew normally and those who experienced adversity attributed to maternal deprivation. Their results revealed that contrary to the normal development trends, children who experienced maternal deprivation demonstrated mature amygdala-mPFC connections implying negative coupling. In addition, this group was less anxious, further proving their hypothesis that amygdala-mPFC connections develop differently in response to maternal deprivation. This article is relevant to my research as it analyses the effect of stressful conditions on human brain development and socioemotional reactions throughout the growth and development cycle.
Janetsian-Fritz, S., Timme, N., Timm, M., McCane, A., Baucum II, A., O’Donnell, B., & Lapish, C. (2018). Maternal deprivation induces alterations in cognitive and cortical function in adulthood. Translational Psychiatry, 8(1). Web.
The impact of postnatal experiences on brain development with specific reference to the neural circuit is the primary study topic in the study by Janetsian et al. (2018). The authors hypothesize that early life traumas such as maternal separation, infections, and malnutrition impact brain development. To sum up the early postnatal adversity factors, the focus was placed on maternal deprivation studying how it influences the functioning of the neural circuit in childhood and adulthood. Just as in many research studies, the authors used rodents as the test subjects. In their study, Janetsian et al. (2018) maternally deprived some rodents and studied their recognition memory (RM) in adulthood. The results entailed tests on catechol-o-methyl transferase (COMT), expression of glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD67), and depth EEG in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the temporal cortex (TC), and ventral striatum. The authors concluded that maternally deprived rodents had a distorted RM development with inhibited COMT and GAD67 expressions. This article is relevant to my research as it shows how maternal deprivation impacts cognitive development and leads to neurodevelopmental disorders.
References
Gee, D., Gabard-Durnam, L., Flannery, J., Goff, B., Humphreys, K., & Telzer, E. et al. (2013). Early developmental emergence of human amygdala-prefrontal connectivity after maternal deprivation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(39), 15638-15643. Web.
Janetsian-Fritz, S., Timme, N., Timm, M., McCane, A., Baucum II, A., O’Donnell, B., & Lapish, C. (2018). Maternal deprivation induces alterations in cognitive and cortical function in adulthood. Translational Psychiatry, 8(1). Web.