Effects of Early Life Stress on Cognitive and Affective Function: An Integrated Review of Human Literature

By Pia Pechtel, Diego A. Pizzagalli. Psychopharmacology, 2010

1,290 citations recorded by the source corpus.

RationaleThe investigation of putative effects of early life stress (ELS) in humans on later behavior and neurobiology is a fast developing field. While epidemiological and neurobiological studies paint a somber picture of negative outcomes, relatively little attention has been devoted to integrating the breadth of findings concerning possible cognitive and emotional deficits associated with ELS. Emerging findings from longitudinal studies examining developmental trajectories of the brain in healthy samples may provide a new framework to understand mechanisms underlying ELS sequelae.ObjectiveThe goal of this review was twofold. The first was to summarize findings from longitudinal data on normative brain development. The second was to utilize this framework of normative brain development to interpret changes in developmental trajectories associated with deficits in cognitive and affective function following ELS.ResultsFive principles of normative brain development were identified and used to discuss behavioral and neural sequelae of ELS. Early adversity was found to be associated with deficits in a range of cognitive (cognitive performance, memory, and executive functioning) and affective (reward processing, processing of social and affective stimuli, and emotion regulation) functions.ConclusionThree general conclusions emerge: (1) higher-order, complex cognitive and affective functions associated with brain regions undergoing protracted postnatal development are particularly vulnerable to the deleterious effects of ELS; (2) the amygdala is particularly sensitive to early ELS; and (3) several deficits, particularly those in the affective domain, appear to persist years after ELS has ceased and may increase risk for later psychopathology.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a942bebf6750c2a789c9f0e227f760fe4b08c8e9

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Citations in the corpus

Chronic stress, cognitive functioning and mental health. (2011, neutral): “These events or situations increase the child’s exposure to stress and its adverse effects (for a recent review see Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011).”
Parenting Influences on Executive Function in Early Childhood: A Review (2014, background): “Contexts of extreme adversity may be characterized not only by compromised caregiving but also a range of other environmental insults (e.g., maltreatment) that likely also shape EF (Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2011).”
The Potential Benefits of Mindfulness Training in Early Childhood: A Developmental Social Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective (2012, background): “…a nonjudgmental and nonreactive attitude that may directly attenuate influences that interfere with reflection (such as cortisol/stress; e.g., Pechtel & Pizzagalli, 2010; Sapolsky, 1996) and amplify influences that promote it (such as dopamine/approach-oriented emotions such as Child…”
More than a feeling: A unified view of stress measurement for population science (2018, background): “…such as chronic inflammation in adulthood (Slopen et al., 2010; Surtees et al., 2003; Danese et al., 2007) and telomere shortening (Hanssen et al., 2017; Ridout et al., 2017), cognitive and affective processes (Pechtel and Pizzagalli, 2011), and behavioral proclivities (Miller et al., 2011).”
Stress and Obesity. (2019, background): “Stress, however, can undermine self-regulatory cognitive processes such as executive functioning (Pechtel & Pizzagalli 2011) and interferes with the brain areas responsible for self-regulation (Liston et al. 2009). www.annualreviews.org • Stress and Obesity 5.3 Review in Advance first posted on…”
Behavior Problems After Early Life Stress: Contributions of the Hippocampus and Amygdala (2014, background): “involved in emotion processing and regulation, such as the prefrontal cortex (PFC), hippocampus, and amygdala (26).”
Depression, Stress, and Anhedonia: Toward a Synthesis and Integrated Model (2014, background): “…and human literature, it is clear that such stressors have long-lasting effects on other processes, including enhanced perceptual sensitivity to threat-related cues, exaggerated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal responses, and hippocampal dysfunction (for a review, see Pechtel & Pizzagalli 2011).”
Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review (2012, background): “…2012 | Volume 6 | Article 52 | 1 early life stress has furthermore been associated with a series of cognitive problems such as low academic performance and IQ, as well as with specific deficits in language, memory, inhibition, and attention deficits (For a review see Pechtel and Pizzagalli, 2010).”