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Children who experience neglect, abuse and poverty have a tougher time as adults than do well-cared-for kids. Now there’s evidence that such stress can actually change the size of brain structures responsible for learning, memory and processing emotion. The finding is in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
那些遭受過忽視、虐待、和貧困的孩子在長大后過的生活比那些在呵護中成長的孩子還要艱難。現在，有證據顯示，上述壓力能改變負責學習、記憶、和情緒處理的腦結構的大小。此發現發表在《生物心理學》期刊中。
Researchers took images of the brains of 12-year-olds who had suffered either physical abuse or neglect or had grown up poor. From the images the scientists were able to measure the size of the amygdala and hippocampus—two structures involved in emotional processing and memory. And they compared the sizes of these structures with those of 12-year-old children who were raised in middle-class families and had not been abused. And they found that the stressed children had significantly smaller amygdalas and hippocampuses than did the kids from the more nurturing environments.
研究人員拍攝了一些圖片，這些圖片均取自遭受過軀體虐待、忽視、或貧困的12歲孩童?？茖W家從這些圖片中可以測量出杏仁核和海馬區的大小——這兩個腦結構均涉及情緒的處理和記憶。他們又將這些數據和那些從中產家庭出身、沒受過虐待的12歲孩童的腦結構相關數據作比較。結果發現，那些受過上述壓力的孩童，其杏仁核和海馬區的大小明顯小于那些從良好環境中成長的孩童的杏仁核和海馬區的大小。
Early stress has been associated with depression, anxiety, cancer and lack of career success later on in adulthood. This study on the sizes of brain regions may offer physiological clues to why what happens to toddlers can have such a profound impact decades later.
早期壓力和沮喪、焦慮、癌癥、以及長大后事業的失敗有關。對腦區域大小的研究或許能為解釋“幼童期發生的事為什么會對數十年后的生活帶來如此深刻的影響”這一問題提供生理線索。
