Prolonged institutional rearing is associated with atypically larger amygdala volume and difficulties in emotion regulation

By Nim Tottenham, Todd A. Hare, Brian T. Quinn, Thomas McCarry, Marcella Nurse, T. Gilhooly, A. Milner, Adriana Galvan, Matthew C. Davidson, Inge-Marie Eigsti and 7 more. Developmental Science, 2010

853 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Early adversity, for example poor caregiving, can have profound effects on emotional development. Orphanage rearing, even in the best circumstances, lies outside of the bounds of a species-typical caregiving environment. The long-term effects of this early adversity on the neurobiological development associated with socio-emotional behaviors are not well understood. Seventy-eight children, who include those who have experienced orphanage care and a comparison group, were assessed. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to measure volumes of whole brain and limbic structures (e.g., amygdala, hippocampus). Emotion regulation was assessed with an emotional go-nogo paradigm, and anxiety and internalizing behaviors were assessed using the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders, the Child Behavior Checklist, and a structured clinical interview. Late adoption was associated with larger corrected amygdala volumes, poorer emotion regulation, and increased anxiety. Although more than 50% of the children who experienced orphanage rearing met criteria for a psychiatric disorder, with a third having an anxiety disorder, the group differences observed in amygdala volume were not driven by the presence of an anxiety disorder. The findings are consistent with previous reports describing negative effects of prolonged orphanage care on emotional behavior and with animal models that show long term changes in the amygdala and emotional behavior following early postnatal stress. These changes in limbic circuitry may underlie residual emotional and social problems experienced by children who have been internationally adopted.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/31a5e9a08521ecffd4743f1e08dbfe48201d883a

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Citations in the corpus

The Adolescent Brain and the Emergence and Peak of Psychopathology (2015, background): “As such, children raised in these environments are subjected to higher levels of stress and less child-parent interaction than their non-orphaned peers and are prone to higher rates of emotion dysregulation and psychopathology (Tottenham et al., 2010, 2011; Gee et al., 2013).”
Adverse childhood experiences, allostasis, allostatic load, and age-related disease. (2012, background): “adoption compared with non-institutionalized children [75].”
Maternal cortisol over the course of pregnancy and subsequent child amygdala and hippocampus volumes and affective problems (2012, background): “ically large amygdala and increased incidence of anxiety disorders (51, 52), and maternal depression in the postnatal period is associated with larger amygdala volumes in preadolescent children (53).”
The Temporal Elements of Psychological Resilience: An Integrative Framework for the Study of Individuals, Families, and Communities (2015, background): “…or deprivation at key early developmental phases can dramatically impact brain development, producing for example atypically large amygdala volume (Tottenham et al., 2010), precocious amygdala-prefrontal connectivity (Gee et al., 2013), and rigid and inappropriate patterns of response, (e.g.,…”
The Lifelong Effects of Early Childhood Adversity and Toxic Stress (2012, background): “Significant stress in early childhood can trigger amygdala hypertrophy and result in a hyperresponsive or chronically activated physiologic stress response, along with increased potential for fear and anxiety.(48,49) It is in this way that a child’s environment and early experiences get under the sk”
Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review (2012, background): “Children exposed to severe early life stress also experience emotion regulation difficulties, which are thought to confer risks for later psychopathology (Lyons-Ruth, 2008; Tottenham et al., 2010).”
More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science (2018, background): “…early life stress to disease development may be mediated by early changes in neural pathways regulating stress, such as amygdala connectivity (e.g., Tottenham et al., 2010), biological pathways such as chronic inflammation in adulthood (Slopen et al., 2010; Surtees et al., 2003; Danese et al.,…”
Psychobiological Mechanisms Underlying the Social Buffering of the HPA Axis: A Review of Animal Models and Human Studies across Development (2013, background): “For instance, some studies of orphanage-reared children show increased amygdala volume compared to normative samples (Tottenham et al., 2010), reduced white matter between the amygdala and the PFC as shown by diffusion tensor imaging (Govindan, Behen, Helder, Makki, & Chugani, 2010), and reduced…”
Behavior Problems After Early Life Stress: Contributions of the Hippocampus and Amygdala (2014, background): “(51) reported larger amygdalae in children who experienced early neglect; however, the children in that sample had experienced a shorter period of caregiving neglect than our participants”
Current research trends in early life stress and depression: review of human studies on sensitive periods, gene-environment interactions, and epigenetics. (2012, neutral): “increased anxiety in previously institutionalized children (Tottenham et al., 2010).”
Sensitive periods of amygdala development: The role of maltreatment in preadolescence (2014, background): “2 (11.10) 28 (84.80) x2 = 26.15 .001 t1:8 U N C O R R E C was found in children who had experienced prolonged institutional deprivation (Mehta et al., 2009; Tottenham et al., 2010) or rearing by chronically depressedmothers (Lupien et al., 2011).”
Childhood Adversity and Neural Development: Deprivation and Threat as Distinct Dimensions of Early Experience (2014, background): “his lack of an early attachment figure, a central feature of early uman experience, has been investigated and reviewed extenively by Tottenham and colleagues (Gee et al., 2013; Tottenham, 012; Tottenham et al., 2010), and as such we do not review these ffects in depth.”
Early developmental emergence of human amygdala–prefrontal connectivity after maternal deprivation (2013, background): “However, prior research including random assignment of care (35) and dose–response associations (10, 11, 47) strongly suggests that effects of maternal deprivation are causal in nature.”
Effects of Early Life Stress on Cognitive and Affective Function: An Integrated Review of Human Literature (2010, background): “The protracted development of GM association areas (DLPFC, STG) poses an increased risk of impairment and is likely to contribute to deficits in cognitive performance.”