Lecture week 3 Flashcards
What are the advantages and disadvantages of retrospective human research methods?
Advantages: practical in the case of long term consequences (in adults)
Disadvantages: the memory can be wrong, recall bias, the causality regarding cause and effect are unclear because the consequences and the abuse are assessed at the same moment
What are the advantages and disadvantages of prospective human research methods?
Advantages: Temporal order abuse & consequences, objective identification of abuse, no recall bias and no selective inclusion based on outcome
Disadvantages: selective inclusion, unethical without intervening in the situation, duration and costs and drop-outs
What is translational research?
What you study in animals is linked to humans
What is fragmented care in animal studies?
unpredictable care from the mother
How can maternal care in rats be augmented?
When the pups are taken away for only 15 minutes a day consistently, this will result in the maternal care going up because the mothers were compensating.
What is the effect of maternal deprivation on the cortisol levels in pups?
Heightened cortisol levels in pups, but when they get older there are low levels of cortisol. Then it goes back up. So, the effect of early life stress on your HPA-axis might change over time. There are ages where you might find overreactivity but it might also at some point be a depletion. People with PTSD often have a depletion, low cortisol levels, and might be more prone to traumatic events.
Why is the hippocampus important in anxiety?
The hippocampus mediates negative feedback of the HPA axis. It also has many cortisol receptors, so cortisol can really impact this brain area. Abnormal hippocampal development may underlie some of the adverse early-life induced behavioral differences.
Maternal support in early childhood predicts smaller/larger hippocampal volumes at school age.
Childhood maltreatment is also associated with reduced/increased volume in the hippocampal subfields
larger, reduced
What is long term potentiation and how is it related to the hippocampus?
A persistent strengthening of synapses based on recent patterns of activity. It is related to hippocampal dependent learning. It takes longer to learn and recognize novel objects for rats who experienced low levels of licking and grooming.
What is adaptive programming in relation to early life stress?
Early-life stress might program the brain such that it optimally responds to stressful contexts encountered later in life.
What is the predictive adaptive response hypothesis (PAR)
In response to a change in the early-life environment the offspring makes adaptations to improve its chance of survival in the anticipated future environment. Stress hormones (such as cortisol) program the brain in early development, and thereby allow adaptation to the present situation and the future environment.
What is the match-mismatch hypothesis?
Will the future environment match or mismatch the early life environment?
How can early life experiences enhance cognition under stressful condotions?
In offspring from low licking and grooming mothers is the hippocampus is less responsive. But when the subjects are given cortisol before, the activity in the hippocampus does go up. This means that the hippocampus does not do too much, but will respond extra strongly in the case that it is relevant, when there are threatening stimuli and there is an environment we should remember. This can be relevant for survival.
There was higher contextual fear conditioning found in maternally deprived (MD) rats after cortisol treatment.
Placement in foster care before the age of how many years is associated with improved outcome?
2 years of age
When does the hypo-responsive period in infants develop and what are some of its properties?
Between 6 and 12 months, lasting till about 4 years of age.
It is dependent on the psychosocial context (e.g. sensitive and responsive care)
Cortisol “buffering” in the presence of an adult the kid is attached to
Protective mechanism for brain development
Due to maltreatment, this period can end early
Vulnerable groups: toddlers, young preschoolers
