Neuroscience: Baby blues
Louis Muglia of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and his colleagues have narrowed down CRH's involvement using mice in which they could control expression of the hormone in the forebrain. When the reseachers raised CRH levels during the first 21 days after birth, the mice went on to show anxious and despairing behaviours as adults. These behaviours could be normalized with antidepressants.
The mice could serve as a model to help find a means of preventing long-term consequences of childhood stress.
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Somehow, I felt like I've seen these results before... somewhere in real life...
If only the world was like anime, where a childhood traumatic response only makes the character more adorable!...Well adorable really isn't the right word, but at least having the effects be not as terrible as it seems in real life.
From Nature Magazine.
2 comments:
I learned something of this from a psychology perspective so it's interesting to hear about it from a chemical/neuroscience one.
I'd be careful about going for a chemical treatment as a first choice for children though, since the body could eventually adjust to an outside influence on the production of this substance, which would make it harder to get the kid off the stuff later on.
Also, before going for the chemical treatment, it makes sense to look into the underlying cause of the stress or trauma - that is, the child's parents or other environmental factors in his or her upbringing. I'd try to figure out what exactly is causing so much trauma or stress in the kid's upbringing first and see if it's something that can be stopped without drug use (such as eccentric, abusive or overly protective/strict parents). Of course, the source of trauma or stress could also be something uncontrollable such as car accident, in which case drugs might be a more viable choice for immediate treatment.
I'm not so sure about the anime bit. A traumatized character in anime is either broken to the point where he or she has trouble feeling joy, or the character becomes a psycho underneath a normal exterior and winds up trying to kill you. :P I think sometimes a character with a traumatic past CAN be endearing or interesting if done properly, but it's easy to mess it up and make the character seem unrealistic, overly emo or really annoying. Or all of the above.
I think the point of the experiment is not to give children drugs, but rather treat those adults who have had traumatic experiences in the past and are prone to these kinds of reactions even after the truama has gone by.
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