Early Childhood Neglect Associated With Altered Brain Structure, ADHD 87
vinces99 writes "Under the rule of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, thousands of Romanian children were placed in overcrowded orphanages with bleak conditions and minimal human contact, a legacy that continued even after the 1989 revolution. Only recently have research and public concern caused policy changes.
University of Washington research on children who began life in these institutions shows that early childhood neglect is associated with changes in brain structure. A paper published this month in Biological Psychiatry shows that children who spent their early years in these institutions have thinner brain tissue in cortical areas that correspond to impulse control and attention. "These differences suggest a way that the early care environment has dramatic and lasting effects for children's functioning," said lead author Katie McLaughlin, a UW assistant professor of psychology.
Since 2000, the Bucharest Early Intervention Project has worked to document and treat the children's health. McLaughlin joined the team about six years ago to focus on brain development. This study is among the first in any setting to document how social deprivation in early life affects the thickness of the cortex, the thin folded layer of gray matter that forms the outer layer of the brain. The study provides "very strong support" for a link between the early environment and ADHD, McLaughlin said.
University of Washington research on children who began life in these institutions shows that early childhood neglect is associated with changes in brain structure. A paper published this month in Biological Psychiatry shows that children who spent their early years in these institutions have thinner brain tissue in cortical areas that correspond to impulse control and attention. "These differences suggest a way that the early care environment has dramatic and lasting effects for children's functioning," said lead author Katie McLaughlin, a UW assistant professor of psychology.
Since 2000, the Bucharest Early Intervention Project has worked to document and treat the children's health. McLaughlin joined the team about six years ago to focus on brain development. This study is among the first in any setting to document how social deprivation in early life affects the thickness of the cortex, the thin folded layer of gray matter that forms the outer layer of the brain. The study provides "very strong support" for a link between the early environment and ADHD, McLaughlin said.
Parallels exist in animals (Score:2)
If you don't care for and train them early they will bite the hand that feeds them.
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In traditional societies your children would take care of you in old age.
Maybe if we got away from this nuclear family bullshit parents would pay more attention to their children because the return on investment would once again be important to them.
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We are animals. The parallels should be expected. Human nature is the same as all other nature.
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Dude, that's no excuse. You still need to stop peeing on my lawn.
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That's the dog (sorry 'bout that)... I'm out back helpin' the missus uh, *clean the pool*..
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Human nature is the same as all other nature.
I'll be more serious now: no, it's not. We fit the definition of animals, yes, but we're freaks of nature. We're smarter than all other animals we know of; our brains have more synapses than any other animal we know of; we have more complex societies than any other animal we know of; and, we've been able to harness more energy in directed ways than any other animals we know of (exhibited by electrical grids, cars, planes, and rockets that leave the fucking atmosphere and send objects into space). You wou
No need to go to Romania (Score:5, Insightful)
Just walk down any street in Chicago.......
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It's the baddest part of town........
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Leroy Brown, is that you?
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It's the baddest part of town........
My name is Sue, how do you do.
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It runs parallel to Fake Street.
Thank facebook for the next generation of adhd (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thank facebook for the next generation of adhd (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm as much of a lawn guarder as the next guy, but what? The ADHD spike really showed up in the 90's, well before this stuff existed or was commonplace. My stepmother's son has ADHD, born in the early 90's, and she's practically a luddite when it comes to technology.
If anything, I think it would have more to do with a double income household. The uptick aligns more with the lack of stay-at-home parents than with technology. I'm not surprised children don't get the attention they need when mommy and daddy are working 8-5 and burned out trying to keep up with the Joneses.
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You left out divorce a swell which started to climb in the mid 70s.
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Then again, the vcr also did a lot of damage. I remember seeing people who would rent 6 movies Friday night, watch them, then rent 7 movies Saturday night, and watch them as well. The whole family was glued to the tube the whole weekend.
Same with Atari 2600s and Nintendo.
Some people can't walk aw
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This problem is now fed by sites that adapt their behavior to each individual to more effectively get and keep their attention. I didn't believe in internet addiction, but I'm now seeing so many people who can't even perform basic tasks like eating without constantly checking what's going on on facebook th
Other possibilities? (Score:5, Insightful)
While human contact is very important in child development there might also be a least a couple or other contributing factors. Here are a few of possibilities;
1. Lack of proper nutrition. If the body is spending all it's food surviving there is little left to grow. It is well known thet the brain takes a lot of nutrition to grow.
2. Lack of exercise. If you don't use the motor parts of the brain they may not grow.
3. Lack of stimulating toys.
4. Lack of stimulating play.
There may be more or it may be all of the above. The study does not isolate any of these factors so there is no way to know which one is important. This looks like yet another study to prove a theory rather than test the theory.
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Care to cite any studies that support that statement? Here [supplementqanda.com] is a link to a list of studies and the conclusion is that the jury is still out on the effects of iron on ADHD.
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Methinks thou dost protest too much. I said there may be other factors as well. I am just trying to point out that blaming the thinning of the brain on one factor is not scientifically supported by this study.
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1. Lack of proper nutrition. If the body is spending all it's food surviving there is little left to grow. It is well known thet the brain takes a lot of nutrition to grow.
Calories aren't the issue these days, it's crap carb calories. Low income = obese in America these days.
2. Lack of exercise. If you don't use the motor parts of the brain they may not grow.
I suppose, but running around is free, pretty much.
3. Lack of stimulating toys.
I'm old. When we didn't have any store bought toys, we played with sticks and tin cans and cardboard boxes and matches(!) when I was a kid in the 50s and early 60s. When bored enough, we'd dig holes in the sides of hills to make cave
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Calories aren't the issue these days, it's crap carb calories. Low income = obese in America these days.
Calories are not proper nutrition. For that you need protein, vitamins and minerals.
The rest shows how privileged you actually were. You were allowed to go outside and play with friends of your choice. You were allowed access to things like sticks, cans, matches and shovels. In these institutes most kids were kept indoors and forced to stay quiet and not cause issues. Your life was very different than institutional life.
I just know it irritates the hell out of me to be in a restaurant and watch a small child trying hard, and failing, to compete with it's mother's phone for attention.
There are two sides to every story. While you did see the child competing for attention
ADHD (Score:5, Funny)
Are people still getting ADHD ? Aren't they updating to AD4K these days.
Not Surprising: supported by controlled experiment (Score:5, Interesting)
Greenough showed the effects of enriched and deprived environments on cortical connectivity and thickness in a series of studies. This is one of his early studies:
Science. 1972 Jun 30;176(4042):1445-7. Rearing complexity affects branching of dendrites in the visual cortex of the rat. Volkmar FR, Greenough WT.
"Higher-order dendritic branching is considerably greater in Golgistained neurons from the occipital cortex of rats reared in groups in a complex environment than in similar neurons of littermates reared individually in laboratory cages have intermediate amounts of branching, while lower-order branching did not appear to be affected by any rearing environment."
Makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
And I believe correlation will be found with the lack of child rearing and the forcing of both parents working on the populace. Began with Reagan as I recall, and most certainly coincides with the continuos concentration of wealth in the upper class in this country.
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So you deny it was Reagan who drove the second parent from the home then? Name one major sociatal change in the last thirty years that enables the average person to support a family on one income. Hell, we can't even get a living minimum wage passed in this country. It's all about more profit for the profit mongers and nothing about the survival of the family. So for some it is the best of times, for others the worst of times.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Informative)
Reagan
Here we are, discussing a story about the developmental damage measured in the brains of the victims of Ceausescu's communist hellhole, and this fucking freak starts bitching about Reagan, the one president in my lifetime that made a point of illuminating the plight of people subjected to that nightmare.
In actual fact [dol.gov] the ratio of working women has been steadily increasing since the end of WW2. Reagan's time in office didn't influence that trend one way or the other.
But keep knock'n back that Daily KOS kool-aid. No sense in allowing reality to impede on that fucked up worldview.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
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i don't think someone orchestrated the need for both parents to work as part of a way to alter the brain structure of a generation...
but there is no denying that people with low impulse control make better consumers...
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No you are wrong.
http://www.dol.gov/oasam/progr... [dol.gov]
The rate of women joining the workforce has been more or less constant since 1948. The increase in the divorce rate, the pushing of women to have a career instead of staying home, the reduction of well paying manufacturing jobs, and many other issues has caused this.
I know of a couple where the mother has the higher potential to earn and the father stays at home which is fine. The key is not that women must stay home but at least one parent should stay home
And if the opposite was true? (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine if the opposite was true; if complete neglect and institutionalization was good for kids. Now that would be a real finding.
old article with different title (Score:4, Insightful)
If you leave a child in a room, with all the nutrition and proper shelter that they will ever need, by themselves, they will grow up to be mentally retarded. This article brings nothing new to the table. It is common knowledge that without human contact they will have hindered learning abilities, such as language and social development, such as the Feral kid who grew up with wolves and ran around on all four legs and couldn't learn to speak properly.
What we need are scientist who focus on positive outcomes, rather than the negative. What are the effects of creating interest for a child in lets say math, science, music, etc at a very early age? You may get a child prodigy, interest should be one of the highest priorities in school. Interest and potentiality are what create great minds, children have the highest potential versus a man who is in his 30's or even 20's, but first interest must be created before the potentiality can leap to higher levels. A child who has no interest in learning has no potential, but one who does can become the next Einstein.
There are always going to be neglected children, an article on neglected children isn't going to help neglected children or bad parents. Children spend more time at school then they do at home (in terms of interaction and creating self identity). Schooling is where, if anything, disorders such as ADHD arise. The primary education system needs improvement, not parents, because nothing can actually be done about parenting, there will ALWAYS be bad parents, but there could always be GOOD TEACHERS who could improve their lives.
What OP posted pretty much sums up what a bad scientist is, wasting time and resources on something that has little effect on helping the world
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Feral children
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org]
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ancient news (Score:4, Insightful)
Decades ago there was an experiment with monkeys deprived of maternal support to varying degrees. Some not allowed to touch or see the mother. Autopsies showed that the deprived monkeys had massive (and obvious to any observer) brain deficiencies. These monkeys were never able to adjust to social settings with others of their kind. Their behavior was obviously abnormal. My impression was that every moment of their life was stressful for them. Sorry I can't recall the source of the video I saw.
This result would be the same for dogs, cats and humans. I can't comprehend why it would be news in the year 2014.
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Decades ago there was an experiment with monkeys deprived of maternal support to varying degrees. Some not allowed to touch or see the mother. Autopsies showed that the deprived monkeys had massive (and obvious to any observer) brain deficiencies. These monkeys were never able to adjust to social settings with others of their kind. Their behavior was obviously abnormal. My impression was that every moment of their life was stressful for them. Sorry I can't recall the source of the video I saw.
This result would be the same for dogs, cats and humans. I can't comprehend why it would be news in the year 2014.
Hmmm ... You seem to have missed the even more "interesting" followup studies. I was a grad student working with some of those reasearchers, so I heard a bit about it. They took their adult solo-raised monkeys, who were highly asocial, and caged them for a while with infant monkeys. After a few months, they took those individuals and put them in the "social" cages with established groups of their own species -- and they behaved like normal, socialized monkeys.
So maybe we could try this with our "depri
See author Dr. Gabor Mate (Score:1)
Not only is abuse a factor, but also basic critical factors missing from childhood such as emotionally stable adults. I've been studying this subject and working with kids (currently mentoring) for the last 5 years and it all fits, especially after meeting parents and observing how they treat and interact with their child. Check out author Gabor Mate and his books on stress, addiction, parenting, and ADHD. His lectures are all over youtube and his website is outstanding: drgabormate.com. I've handed out doz
join the ECNA (Score:2)
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shouldn't that be the care association? or is the point to promote neglect? that name is as bad as american cancer society
How is that news ? (Score:1)
Additional reading (Score:3)
"The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog" contains stories about children who went through trauma, and recovered to a degree one would not have thought possible. One of the stories is about the indoctrinated children who were released from Waco, before the structure burned. Another story is about a child which spent about a year (as I recall) caged like an animal. Though disturbing, it's a fascinating look at childhood development and a fresh way of looking at how best to care for traumatized children and help them to be able to heal as much as possible.
"Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential -- and Endangered" is about how empathy is "learned", and why it is so essential.
Both books are by co-authors Dr. Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz. They are highly recommended for anyone working with traumatized children.
Links (Score:2)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Boy-... [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ... [amazon.com]
CASA: I am for the Child (Score:5, Informative)
When we are born, we have no choice what home we are born into, or who our parents are. We may be born into wealth or poverty. We may have parents who treat us with care and tenderness; or we may have parents who don't know how to care for a child, have drug addictions, are incarcerated, are violent, or are mentally unstable. Some children are loved and kissed, while other children are severely neglected, beaten, or abused sexually. This is the lottery we all played. Most of us won. Some children lost.
Abused children are missing a part of their childhood. Where they should have received love, they received brutality or neglect. Because they missed out on a crucial part of their development, they are behind the other children. Children which have to be removed from their parents for their protection can sometimes be placed with family or a close friend. When this is not possible, they enter the foster care system.
In the foster care system, there may be many people involved in the child's life: parents, other family or friends, social workers, attorneys, therapists, doctors, educators, foster parents or group home staff, and hopefully a Court-Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) or Guardian ad Litem (GAL).
A CASA is a volunteer who is a constant adult presence in the child's life, which may be lacking other permanency. While social workers, group home staff, therapists, and doctors may work with many children, a CASA is assigned to a single child. The CASA meets with the child at least every other week, takes her out for activities or to eat, learns about her needs and circumstances, and uses this knowledge to advocate for her best interests.
Please consider volunteering as a CASA.
http://www.casaforchildren.org... [casaforchildren.org]
Adoption (Score:5, Interesting)
We adopted our son a few years ago. When you're going through the process you're required to take classes where they prepare you for this. Romanian and Russian orphanages are so horrific we specifically ruled out adopting from those countries. It's a tough choice but you have to weigh your families ability to deal with huge amounts of stress and the financial burden of years of therapy, drugs, etc...
We adopted from Ethiopia, which is a country that's renowned how well they care for their orphans despite the poverty. I saw the care centers, and the people that ran them. They rival daycares here in the US and the workers hugged and cried with my son when he left. Even despite that, the lack of a true 1on1 relationship with a mother has had a significant impact on my son. With women especially, he fears they'll leave him. He acts out to get attention. His teachers need to do special 1on1 activities with him to reassure him. Give him special tasks, etc. It's tough but he's otherwise a great kid and definitely smarter than I was at that age. It's the biggest challenge I've ever had in my life. I couldn't imagine what the famillies of those Romanian children are going through. My hat is off to them.
One of the first things they have you watch is this study from the 1950s where they gave monkeys a Fake wire mother that had milk and cloth mother that did not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Caution: it's emotionally disturbing to a lot of people.
The monkey would rather starve on the cloth comforting mother than eat on the wire mother.
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I adopted three from Ukraine. I can tell some stories about raising the products of East European orphanages.
Chapeau to you sir. You and your wife are kind people. Good luck on your adventure.
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Just like to say, well done sir -- parenthood alone is hard work, let alone with any added issues. Hats off to you.
Did they account for nutrition and exercise? (Score:2)
not a repost (Score:2)
So environment has a bigger influence that what we've measured in the Genome.
If only we tackled the less expensive solutions first.
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
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Oops, this was a repost. I meant to post this comment in an alternate thread.
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]