"Stress alone and stress combined with traumatic brain injury (TBI) produced a few noteworthy results. Both conditions activated pathways in excitatory and inhibitory neurons associated with plasticity, which is the brain's ability to adapt to all kinds of changes—mostly to promote flexibility, but sometimes, when the changes are maladaptive, resulting in negative outcomes. "
It's weird that this study is interpreted as changes in gene activation is bad, when it's clearly mostly good. It's like saying that micro-tearing of muscles during exercise is bad, when in fact that's the process which builds more muscles. Sure, some tears of muscle are bad, but it's mostly good, and I assume that the changes in gene expression in the brain are a form of growing and reacting to new situations, not necessarily bad.
The two processes are not entirely analogous. They are both the result of the body reacting to external stress, and to become more fit for the environment that creates the stress. In the weightlifting example this is a positive change — the body gets stronger, as long as the exercise program is good.
In the TBI and trauma cases, though, the external stresses are negative, not positive, thus the adaptations are negative as well. Teach a young brain that the world is stressful and scary and the brain will remember this, and act that way even when removed to a less scary world.
The brain "remembering" has zero link with gene expression, which is what the entire article is about. In fact nothing you mention above responds to the question of gene expression. There's no evidence whatsoever that the change in behavior of an individual after stress is linked to differences in gene expression.
Absolutely not. If your brain is molded in a stressful environment, it’ll optimize for reaction to and preemption of threats, with all the anti-social behavior that entails, rather than creativity, cooperation, high-level learning, and constructive pro-social behaviors.
Do you have any references to support this? What you and the person you responded to said both seem reasonable to some extent, but without evidence It's not clear to what extent they are true.
Relatedly, does "stress" have the same meaning in what you say and others are saying? It seems reasonable (though I have no evidence or related expertise) that the optimal level of stress is non-zero (for some definition of stress, to the extent that it can be quantified). Why wouldn't the optimal level of stress promote more pro-social, creative, cooprerative, etc. behaviour than sub-optimal stress levels?
The longitudinal studies of the of the kids who were 0-10 during the pandemic are going to be fascinating.
As a tiny example: I've anecdotally heard that kids in the 5-10yo bracket need their parents in the bed to fall asleep at a higher rate than would typically be normal. Probably because parents cuddled their kids to sleep during the lockdowns as a stress reducer for both of them, rather than turning out the lights and leaving the room.
People are really blowing this covid lockdown stuff out of proportion, like seriously we had to be more indoors for a while, how is that stressful? Some children are literally living in a warzone and don't know if they will survive through the week, some live in poverty, some lose one of their parents or both.
My son is 6 so it falls neatly in that bracket and if the covid lockdown is the most stressful thing to happen in his childhood I will consider us extremely lucky.
And even so, cuddling more with parents? How will they ever recover?
> Some children are literally living in a warzone and don't know if they will survive through the week, some live in poverty, some lose one of their parents or both.
This isn't the gotcha you think it is. Yes, there are children who experience worse trauma and stress than COVID lockdowns. However, those children of war will be also be developmentally stunted, far, far, more than the children of COVID lockdowns.
This is a "yes, and" scenario. Reducing stress in all its forms during early childhood development is the goal here, and the fact that some have more than others does not mean those with less stress are worthy of casual dismissal.
Evolutionarily speaking, social isolation is more stressful than violence
Soldiers develop mental health issues more often when they return home and become socially isolated than when they are at war, surrounded by their brothers
> Probably because parents cuddled their kids to sleep during the lockdowns as a stress reducer for both of them, rather than turning out the lights and leaving the room.
That's a good thing. Child has a need, Parent meets that need. That is a healthy relationship. But... the parent should have worked to ween the child from this behavior back to a normal sleeping situation.
Dr. Gabor Mate¹ should be taken with large grains of salt when it comes to ADHD and related conditions. There is a lack of published research or dedicated expertise on the matter; Dr. Russell Barkley, a leading ADHD expert and researcher², has a good video on the subject³.
Children cope with their surroundings and if traumatized habituate themselves to these habits that are temporarily soothing but deleterious long term, often imitating family members who may have also carried these learned behaviors in their own life. Cycles of generations that are impoverished in comparison to their well to do neighbors are an example.
Title should be "...changes gene expression levels"
So they took a cohort of baby rats, exposed one group of rats to 'stress', smacked another group of rats in the head hard enough to cause brain injury, had a control group which was 'unstressed', then sliced up their brains to measure levels of protein expression. Some rats were not chopped up and their 'natural behavior' was monitored.
This is apparently valuable research because it shows that traumatized and injured rats have different protein expression patterns in their brains from non-traumatized and injured rats and also behave differently as adults. This is applicable to humans because...???
Takeaways:
(1) torturing rodents for dubious results is ethically questionable and (2) what a waste of money and resources.
We don't know if it is applicable to humans. Some of it might, some of it might not. First you figure out how rat brains work and then you can check if human brains work the same way.
You are right that we are interested in human brains, and how to heal them. The reason we don't do these experiments on humans is mainly ethical. Simply put we value human lives more than rats. There are also logistical challenges with humans. They take too long to grow up and cost too much to raise.
> torturing rodents for dubious results
What makes the results dubious? I'm not an expert on brain research. Is it just that you have a dislike to animal analog studies? Is the gene expression changes caused by early-life stress and brain injury well understood enough that there are no open questions the experiment might answer?
Applicable to humans because head trauma is unfortunately very common in infants, toddlers, and children. Developing effective treatments of pediatric TBI and adverse childhood events would be a real boon to humanity.
Seems like a weird question. Are you a researcher in a related field? Then maybe incorporate this finding into your models for how things work or tweak your future experiments based on this data.
Are you an unaffiliated Rust developer? Then you're not really supposed to do anything with this.. it's not particularly for you. Read it if you're intellectually curious, to expand your knowledge and understanding of the world in general? Or ignore it if you don't care?
Note to readers: Take this with a grain of salt. University PR team (and HN) should wait until this work is reviewed and published as a full length paper.
This is an abstract that has not been reviewed—-a small study developing a rat two-hit model. All of the RNA work is based on three 21 day old males in the three groups. No information in abstract on the strain of rats (often outbred Sprague-Dawley).
If this work interests you then you will find hundreds of studies on stress effects on hippocampus and many also on TBI effects on cortex and hippocampus.
Other than the general shortcomings of a rat study, does this result run counter to your understanding of the effects of stress on genetic expression in the brain?
My understanding is that early childhood stress in humans has also been fairly reliably linked to things such as “psychopathic” behaviors. e.g. [0]
Most neuroscientists would expect TBI to be linked to regional micoglial activation. And perhaps activated GFAP-positive astrocytes. Psychosocial stress will have different effects mediated in part by the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal system.
There may be some postmortem RNAseq studies of humans, even small pediatric cohort, but I did not find them in PubMed. I did find this treatment approach for TBI (yes, in mice)
As someone who both experienced childhood trauma (refuged to another continent at the age of 4) and has received a fair share of blows to the head (many years in martial arts) - this does kind of resonate. Mood disorders and ADHD like symptoms are things I've dealt with but which I'm learning to control with age. It did take several decades and much introspection to introduce some sort of self-control and awareness about when I'm acting irrational though.
I'm convinced that stress is the single biggest factor in aging and overall health. Look at the careers of people who live to 100+ -- they almost always worked in something where they weren't dealing with a lot of trauma and high stakes. You read this blue zones stuff and at the center of all of it is low-stress. Not necessarily "leisure," but activities that are intended to be calming and thoughtful - exercise baked into the day, shared meals prepared at home, community interaction.
Readit News
It's weird that this study is interpreted as changes in gene activation is bad, when it's clearly mostly good. It's like saying that micro-tearing of muscles during exercise is bad, when in fact that's the process which builds more muscles. Sure, some tears of muscle are bad, but it's mostly good, and I assume that the changes in gene expression in the brain are a form of growing and reacting to new situations, not necessarily bad.
In the TBI and trauma cases, though, the external stresses are negative, not positive, thus the adaptations are negative as well. Teach a young brain that the world is stressful and scary and the brain will remember this, and act that way even when removed to a less scary world.
Relatedly, does "stress" have the same meaning in what you say and others are saying? It seems reasonable (though I have no evidence or related expertise) that the optimal level of stress is non-zero (for some definition of stress, to the extent that it can be quantified). Why wouldn't the optimal level of stress promote more pro-social, creative, cooprerative, etc. behaviour than sub-optimal stress levels?
It's all presumed to be one's 'personal responsibility' that they were victims of their own kind.
The onus belongs on society to provide healthy and stable environments for people.
As a tiny example: I've anecdotally heard that kids in the 5-10yo bracket need their parents in the bed to fall asleep at a higher rate than would typically be normal. Probably because parents cuddled their kids to sleep during the lockdowns as a stress reducer for both of them, rather than turning out the lights and leaving the room.
My son is 6 so it falls neatly in that bracket and if the covid lockdown is the most stressful thing to happen in his childhood I will consider us extremely lucky.
And even so, cuddling more with parents? How will they ever recover?
This isn't the gotcha you think it is. Yes, there are children who experience worse trauma and stress than COVID lockdowns. However, those children of war will be also be developmentally stunted, far, far, more than the children of COVID lockdowns.
This is a "yes, and" scenario. Reducing stress in all its forms during early childhood development is the goal here, and the fact that some have more than others does not mean those with less stress are worthy of casual dismissal.
Soldiers develop mental health issues more often when they return home and become socially isolated than when they are at war, surrounded by their brothers
Dead Comment
"At 4.5 years of age, pandemic kids had higher vocabulary, visual memory, and overall cognitive performance compared with pre-pandemic kids."
The authors suggest that pandemic 2-year-olds developed better problem-solving skills, accelerating the increased cognitive performance by age 4.5
Although pandemic 2-year-olds had more socio-emotional risks early on, these seem to disappear by age 4.5
That's a good thing. Child has a need, Parent meets that need. That is a healthy relationship. But... the parent should have worked to ween the child from this behavior back to a normal sleeping situation.
A parent should not be meeting every want of a child.
Scattered minds and when the body says no connect to the effects of stress on the body and children in particular.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabor_Mat%C3%A9
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Barkley
³ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO19LWJ0ZnM
So they took a cohort of baby rats, exposed one group of rats to 'stress', smacked another group of rats in the head hard enough to cause brain injury, had a control group which was 'unstressed', then sliced up their brains to measure levels of protein expression. Some rats were not chopped up and their 'natural behavior' was monitored.
This is apparently valuable research because it shows that traumatized and injured rats have different protein expression patterns in their brains from non-traumatized and injured rats and also behave differently as adults. This is applicable to humans because...???
Takeaways: (1) torturing rodents for dubious results is ethically questionable and (2) what a waste of money and resources.
We don't know if it is applicable to humans. Some of it might, some of it might not. First you figure out how rat brains work and then you can check if human brains work the same way.
You are right that we are interested in human brains, and how to heal them. The reason we don't do these experiments on humans is mainly ethical. Simply put we value human lives more than rats. There are also logistical challenges with humans. They take too long to grow up and cost too much to raise.
> torturing rodents for dubious results
What makes the results dubious? I'm not an expert on brain research. Is it just that you have a dislike to animal analog studies? Is the gene expression changes caused by early-life stress and brain injury well understood enough that there are no open questions the experiment might answer?
Applicable to humans because head trauma is unfortunately very common in infants, toddlers, and children. Developing effective treatments of pediatric TBI and adverse childhood events would be a real boon to humanity.
Seems like a weird question. Are you a researcher in a related field? Then maybe incorporate this finding into your models for how things work or tweak your future experiments based on this data.
Are you an unaffiliated Rust developer? Then you're not really supposed to do anything with this.. it's not particularly for you. Read it if you're intellectually curious, to expand your knowledge and understanding of the world in general? Or ignore it if you don't care?
This is an abstract that has not been reviewed—-a small study developing a rat two-hit model. All of the RNA work is based on three 21 day old males in the three groups. No information in abstract on the strain of rats (often outbred Sprague-Dawley).
If this work interests you then you will find hundreds of studies on stress effects on hippocampus and many also on TBI effects on cortex and hippocampus.
My understanding is that early childhood stress in humans has also been fairly reliably linked to things such as “psychopathic” behaviors. e.g. [0]
[0] https://www.academia.edu/download/89809148/2128.pdf
There may be some postmortem RNAseq studies of humans, even small pediatric cohort, but I did not find them in PubMed. I did find this treatment approach for TBI (yes, in mice)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33540074/
Just curious.