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If her mother always wrinkles her nose in disgust and grumbles when changing her nappy, pulling it off roughly, the baby will form the expectation that nappy changing is an unpleasant experience and maybe eventually that her bodily functions are a source of displeasure to others.
It is the repeated and typical experiences that structure her brain
very highly charged and arousing experiences will be registered in the amygdala which is responsible for instant reactions to situations of danger.
However, humans have developed a way to revise those inner images if circumstances change.
is offered by the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate.
These parts of the brain enable us to ‘hold’ our thoughts and emotions, extending them in time, allowing us to reflect on experience an...
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The orbitofrontal cortex has specialised neurons for recognising faces, while another part of the brain (the temporal lobe), which also starts to mature at the same time, processes the visual side of faces. At
The mother’s disapproving face can trigger stress hormones such as cortisol which stops the endorphins and dopamine neurons in their tracks – and also stops the pleasurable feelings they generate.
These looks have a powerful impact on the growing child.
it was not the mother’s absence in itself that increased stress hormones such as cortisol, but the absence of an adult figure who was responsive and alert to their states moment by moment.
However, the toddler’s brain actually needs a certain amount of cortisol to complete its development at this time
As the toddler explores his local domestic world, the parent now issues a prohibition such as ‘No! Don’t do that!’ every nine minutes on average
The young child can’t do this for himself, so if parents don’t restore attunement and regulation, he may remain stuck in a state of arousal.
The second year is notable for the increased linguistic ability that now develops, based in the left brain.
Parents can now teach social rules in a more explicit way: ‘We don’t snatch other people’s things’ or ‘If you eat up your fishfingers, I will give you your favourite yoghurt.’
Parents can now talk to their child about the future – ‘Cheer up, we’re going to the park to see the ducks later this morning’
and they can refer to the past –
The most highly emotional memories from infancy are stored instead in more primitive systems such as the amygdala, or in other brain pathways, and either way are not accessible to consciousness.
The success or failure of these connections may depend on what happens in the child’s important relationships during the second and third years,
It seems to be the process of putting feelings into words that enables the left and right brains to become integrated.
Discovering that they could measure cortisol in the saliva, with much the same accuracy as a blood test,
cortisol usually rises in the early morning to help generate energy for the day, and sinks to a low level in the late afternoon.
‘Stop what you’re doing, guys! This is an emergency! Don’t waste time fighting bugs. Don’t waste time learning or connecting new pathways. Don’t relax! I want all your attention on this problem.’
The effect of too much cortisol can be to let too much glutamate get to the hippocampus, starting a process of neuron loss (Mogghadam
the stress goes on for a very long period, Bill might start to get forgetful, as the hippocampus is central to learning and memory. As the saying goes ‘Stress makes you stupid’
Only the medial prefrontal cortex, particularly the anterior cingulate, has the ability to control or override the amygdala
But the longer the stress continues, the more the neurotransmitters that normally power the prefrontal cortex are affected. Dopamine and serotonin levels fall there. Cells may also eventually start to die there.
genes provide us with raw ingredients for a mind – and each one of us comes with slightly different ingredients – but the cooking, particularly in infancy, is what matters.
Most genes are expressed in response to environmental triggers and in combination with each other.
This is when our automatic emotional and physiological responses are set up in the brain.
Stress in infancy – such as consistently being ignored when you cry – is particularly hazardous because high levels of cortisol in the early months of life can also affect the development of other neurotransmitter systems whose pathways are still being established.
Gradually, however, they get used to distressing situations once they are confident that they will be managed by an adult caregiver, and cortisol is less easily triggered
Once their sleeping patterns become more stable, between about the age of 3 and 6 months, the normal rhythm of an early morning peak in cortisol as the baby wakes is established. However, it takes most of early childhood (until around 4 years old) to establish an adult pattern of high cortisol in the morning and low cortisol towards the end of the day.
At the same time, an amygdala that has to deal with a lot of stress in early life tends to become more reactive. It responds to chronic stress by working harder and growing larger
Instead, it was parental hostility that made the hippocampus shrink (Luby
It seems that what you put in to the system is what you get out – a well-resourced and well-regulated infant becomes a child and adult who can regulate himself or herself well,
If he is a ‘high reactor’ to stress, he will produce a lot of cortisol at the least provocation.
These types of stress response systems have been linked to having had less than optimum early mothering, with an inexperienced or depressed mother, or an unpredictable mother, who is sometimes available and sometimes not.
They need more than average amounts of soothing and calming, through being held and fed frequently, to restore their systems to normal responsiveness.
Left with their biological mothers, these rat pups tend to be fearful and easily stressed. But when experimenters placed them for ‘adoption’ with non-fearful rat mothers, they found that these baby rats grew up without fear. Clearly, whatever the genetic tendency might be, it was the rearing that mattered
Babies’ resources are so limited that they cannot keep themselves alive, so it is very stressful for them if the mother is not there or does not respond quickly, providing the milk, warmth or feeling of safety they need.
When these needs are not met by others, the baby may become more aware of a sense of powerlessness and helplessness.
In newborn babies, the stress response can be generated by physical danger such as a forceps delivery or circumcision
A baby’s cries of mental pain when distressed also presumably have an important function.
the more social power you have, the less cortisol you have.
From this point of view, it is clear that babyhood can be extremely stressful without the support of tender, protective parenting.
So it is not necessarily the nature of the stress that matters, but the availability of others to help manage it, as well as the inner resources of the person experiencing it.
children who appeared on the surface to be cool and collected did have high cortisol levels under stress because they too turned out to be insecurely attached.
It was the insecure attachment that mattered, not the personality style or ‘persona’, which is not always a reliable guide to inner emotional resources (Gunnar
The key feature of insecure attachment is a lack of confidence in others’ emotional availability and support.
