PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

How parents see themselves may affect their child's brain and stress level

Self-perceived social status predicts hippocampal function and stress hormones

2013-08-09
(Press-News.org) Boston, Mass., -- A mother's perceived social status predicts her child's brain development and stress indicators, finds a study at Boston Children's Hospital. While previous studies going back to the 1950s have linked objective socioeconomic factors -- such as parental income or education -- to child health, achievement and brain function, the new study is the first to link brain function to maternal self-perception.

In the study, children whose mothers saw themselves as having a low social status were more likely to have increased cortisol levels, an indicator of stress, and less activation of their hippocampus, a structure in the brain responsible for long-term memory formation (required for learning) and reducing stress responses.

Findings were published online August 6th by the journal Developmental Science, and will be part of a special issue devoted to the effects of socioeconomic status on brain development.

"We know that there are big disparities among people in income and education," says Margaret Sheridan, PhD, of the Labs of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children's Hospital, the study's first author. "Our results indicate that a mother's perception of her social status 'lives' biologically in her children."

Sheridan, senior investigator Charles Nelson, PhD, of Boston Children's Hospital and colleagues studied 38 children aged 8.3 to 11.8 years. The children gave saliva samples to measure levels of cortisol, and 19 also underwent functional MRI of the brain, focusing on the hippocampus.

Mothers, meanwhile, rated their social standing on a ladder on a scale of 1 to 10, comparing themselves with others in the United States. Findings were as follows:

After controlling for gender and age, the mother's self-perceived social status was a significant predictor of cortisol levels in the child. This finding is consistent with studies in animals. "In animal research, your stress response is related to your relative standing in the hierarchy," Sheridan says. Similarly, the mother's perceived social status significantly predicted the degree of hippocampal activation in their children during a learning task. In contrast, actual maternal education or income-to-needs ratio (income relative to family size) did not significantly predict cortisol levels or hippocampal activation.

The findings suggest that while actual socioeconomic status varies, how people perceive and adapt to their situation is an important factor in child development. Some of this may be culturally determined, Sheridan notes. She is currently participating in a much larger international study of childhood poverty, the Young Lives Project, that is looking at objective and subjective measures of social status along with health measures and cognitive function. The study will capture much wider extremes of socioeconomic status than would a U.S.-based study.

What the current study didn't find was evidence that stress itself alters hippocampal function; no relationship was found between cortisol and hippocampal function, as has been seen in animals, perhaps because of the small number children having brain fMRIs. "This needs further exploration," says Sheridan. "There may be more than one pathway leading to differences in long-term memory, or there may be an effect of stress on the hippocampus that comes out only in adulthood."

###

The study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program (Harvard). Joan How of the Yale College of Medicine, Melanie Araujo of Sandbox Suites (San Francisco) and Michelle Schamberg of the Harvard School of Public Health were coauthors.

Boston Children's Hospital is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its discoveries have benefited both children and adults since 1869. More than 1,100 scientists, including seven members of the National Academy of Sciences, 13 members of the Institute of Medicine and 14 members of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute comprise Boston Children's research community. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for children, Boston Children's today is a 395 bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care grounded in the values of excellence in patient care and sensitivity to the complex needs and diversity of children and families. Boston Children's is also the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. For more information about research and clinical innovation at Boston Children's, visit: http://vectorblog.org.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Low childhood conscientiousness predicts adult obesity

2013-08-09
Results from a longitudinal study show that children who exhibit lower conscientiousness (e.g., irresponsible, careless, not persevering) could experience worse overall health, including greater obesity, as adults. The Oregon Research Institute (ORI) study examines the relationship between childhood personality and adult health and shows a strong association between childhood conscientiousness (organized, dependable, self-disciplined) and health status in adulthood. ORI scientist Sarah Hampson, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health, Hawaii report ...

Deep Earth heat surprise

2013-08-09
Washington, D.C—The key to understanding Earth's evolution is to look at how heat is conducted in the deep lower mantle—a region some 400 to 1,800 miles (660 to 2,900 kilometers) below the surface. Researchers at the Carnegie Institution, with colleagues at the University of Illinois, have for the first time been able to experimentally simulate the pressure conditions in this region to measure thermal conductivity using a new measurement technique developed by the collaborators and implemented by the Carnegie team on the mantle material magnesium oxide (MgO). They found ...

Bubbles are the new lenses for nanoscale light beams

2013-08-09
Bending light beams to your whim sounds like a job for a wizard or an a complex array of bulky mirrors, lenses and prisms, but a few tiny liquid bubbles may be all that is necessary to open the doors for next-generation, high-speed circuits and displays, according to Penn State researchers. To combine the speed of optical communication with the portability of electronic circuitry, researchers use nanoplasmonics -- devices that use short electromagnetic waves to modulate light on the nanometer scale, where conventional optics do not work. However, aiming and focusing this ...

Tahiti: A very hot biodiversity hot spot in the Pacific

2013-08-09
A collaborative biological survey that focused on the insects of French Polynesia has resulted in the discovery of over 100 tiny predatory beetle species in Tahiti, 28 of these species newly described in the open-access journal ZooKeys. The predatory beetles range in size from 3-8 mm long, and have evolutionarily lost their flight wings, making them homebodies living in small patches of mountain forest. The author, James Liebherr of Cornell University, states "It is exhilarating working with such a fauna, because every new locality or ecological situation has the high ...

The code of objects

2013-08-09
Opening our eyes and seeing the world before us, full of objects, is a simple action we may take for granted. Yet our brain is constantly carrying out a huge analysis only to let us see a flower, a pen, the face of our children. Where exactly in our brain does shape become meaning? A group of scientists coordinated by Davide Zoccolan of SISSA of Trieste, in collaboration with the team headed over by Riccardo Zecchina of Polytechnic University of Turin (within the Programma Neuroscienze 2008/2009 financed by Compagnia di San Paolo), studied a specific area of the brain ...

The day before death: A new archaeological technique gives insight into the day before death

2013-08-09
The day before the child's death was not a pleasant one, because it was not a sudden injury that killed the 10-13 year old child who was buried in the medieval town of Ribe in Denmark 800 years ago. The day before death was full of suffering because the child had been given a large dose of mercury in an attempt to cure a severe illness. This is now known to chemist Kaare Lund Rasmussen from University of Southern Denmark – because he and his colleagues have developed a new methodology that can reveal an unheard amount of details from very shortly before a person's death. ...

New hope for improved TB treatments

2013-08-09
Researchers at the University of Southampton have identified new markers of tuberculosis (TB) that may help in the development of new diagnostic tests and treatments. Published online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the study investigated the proteins that are released by a break down of the lung structure in TB patients. Lung damage causes both transmission of infection and mortality. They found that fragments released by break down of the lung's key proteins (collagen and elastin), are increased in the sputum of patients with TB. They also discovered that ...

Whole-genome sequencing uncovers the mysteries of the endangered Chinese alligator

2013-08-09
August 9, 2013, Shenzhen, China - In a study published in Cell Research, Chinese scientists from Zhejiang University and BGI have completed the genome sequencing and analysis of the endangered Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis). This is the first published crocodilian genome, providing a good explanation of how terrestrial-style reptiles adapt to aquatic environments and temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). The Chinese alligator is a member of the alligator family that lives in China. It is critically endangered with a population of ~100 wild and ~10,000 ...

New treatment for brittle bone disease found

2013-08-09
A new treatment for children with brittle bone disease has been developed by the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Children's Hospital. The study of the new treatment for children with the fragile bone disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta was published this week in the world's leading general medical journal, The Lancet. This is the first study to clearly demonstrate that the use of the medicine risedronate can not only reduce the risk of fracture in children with brittle bones but also have rapid action - the curves for fracture risk begin to diverge after only 6 weeks ...

The skinny on cocaine

2013-08-09
Chronic cocaine use may reduce the body's ability to store fat, new research from the University of Cambridge suggests. The scientists found that cocaine use may cause profound metabolic changes which can result in dramatic weight gain during recovery, a distressing phenomenon that can lead to relapse. It was previously widely believed that cocaine suppresses the appetite and that the problematic weight gain during rehabilitation was a result of patients substituting food for drugs. Dr Karen Ersche, from the Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Program takes aim at drinking, unsafe sex, and sexual assault on college campuses

Inability to pay for healthcare reaches record high in U.S.

Science ‘storytelling’ urgently needed amid climate and biodiversity crisis

KAIST Develops Retinal Therapy to Restore Lost Vision​

Adipocyte-hepatocyte signaling mechanism uncovered in endoplasmic reticulum stress response

Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on the ground before dinosaur-killing asteroid

Low LDL cholesterol levels linked to reduced risk of dementia

Thickening of the eye’s retina associated with greater risk and severity of postoperative delirium in older patients

Almost one in ten people surveyed report having been harmed by the NHS in the last three years

Enhancing light control with complex frequency excitations

New research finds novel drug target for acute myeloid leukemia, bringing hope for cancer patients

New insight into factors associated with a common disease among dogs and humans

Illuminating single atoms for sustainable propylene production

New study finds Rocky Mountain snow contamination

Study examines lactation in critically ill patients

UVA Engineering Dean Jennifer West earns AIMBE’s 2025 Pierre Galletti Award

Doubling down on metasurfaces

New Cedars-Sinai study shows how specialized diet can improve gut disorders

Making moves and hitting the breaks: Owl journeys surprise researchers in western Montana

PKU Scientists simulate the origin and evolution of the North Atlantic Oscillation

ICRAFT breakthrough: Unlocking A20’s dual role in cancer immunotherapy

How VR technology is changing the game for Alzheimer’s disease

A borrowed bacterial gene allowed some marine diatoms to live on a seaweed diet

Balance between two competing nerve proteins deters symptoms of autism in mice

Use of antifungals in agriculture may increase resistance in an infectious yeast

Awareness grows of cancer risk from alcohol consumption, survey finds

The experts that can outsmart optical illusions

Pregnancy may reduce long COVID risk

Scientists uncover novel immune mechanism in wheat tandem kinase

Three University of Virginia Engineering faculty elected as AAAS Fellows

[Press-News.org] How parents see themselves may affect their child's brain and stress level
Self-perceived social status predicts hippocampal function and stress hormones