Dwarfism and The Importance of Mothers

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Dwarfism and The Importance of Mothers

• Chapter 6

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• Your development begins
  right at conception
• Stress can disrupt normal development
• Stress in early life can alter
  your vulnerability to disease throughout
  your lifetime

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PreNatal Stress

• Beginning with fetal development, your body is
  adapting and learning how to respond to the world
  around you
• Ex if a woman is pregnant during a famine, the
  fetus is learning that there is not much food in
  the world, these conditions are metabolically
  programmed and the child becomes especially good
  at storing food forever

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What effects can that have?

• A child who has metabolically programmed herself
  to have a thrifty metabolism is more at risk
  for
• Hypertension
• Obesity
• Adult-onset diabetes
• And Cardiovascular Disease

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So what can you do?

• Dont starve the baby while youre pregnant
• The lower the weight of a baby, the greater the
  risk of Metabolic Syndromes

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Stress during Pregnancy

• A Study by Pathik Wadhwa explains that
• A pregnant mothers stress can effect
  fetal development
• He found a significant increase of
  pre-mature birth and impaired recognition, memory
  and habituation throughout the childs life time

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• Stress can also affect the developing brain
• Prenatally stressed rodents and non-human
  primates grow up to have fewer connections
  between the neurons
• This causes impaired learning and memory

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• Children who have been abused show elevated
  glucocorticoid levels and decreased frontal
  cortex development, which is the most highly
  evolved part of the brain
• 75 of all incidences of substance misuse,
  posttraumatic stress, and suicidal behavior in
  women, occur in women who admitted to being
  abused during childhood.
• -Soraya, Seedat

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Michael Meaney

• Michael Meaney studied the lifelong consequences
  of rat pups with attentive vs. unattentive
  mothers

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• He found that pups with high level licking and
  grooming mothers grew to be licking and grooming
  parents
• Where as, pups with inattentive mothers grew up
  to be inattentive parents with elevated
  glucocorticoid levels
• He also found that pups with the LG mothers also
  had an increase in the development of cognitive
  function

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• In a second study, Michael Meaney placed both
  groups of rat pups into enriched environments
  and tested the levels of cognitive development
  among both the high LG and low LG pups
• The low LG pups showed a significant increase in
  cognitive development in the enriched
  environment. however, the high LG pups showed
  little to no improvement.

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Harlows Study

• He raised infant monkeys and gave them a choice
  of 2 types of artificial mothers
• One pseudo-mother with an wire mesh torso had a
  bottle of milk (gave nutrition)
• The other pseudo-mother with an wire mesh torso
  wrapped in terry cloth (love)
• The baby monkeys choose the cloth mother over the
  milk mother

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A motherless child

• Feral Children are children who have grown up
  with little to no human contact.
• In the 1960s a child was found locked in an
  attic, where she was fed through a trap door and
  had experienced only minimal human contact. She
  was like a wild animal

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• When she was found at age 12, Genie was taken
  into the care of a team of doctors and
  psychologists. They found that she had very poor
  cognitive skills, and suffered many health
  defects. However, after years of rehabilitation,
  she was able to speak and interact with her
  peers.
• -LaPointe

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When the parents are Stressed

• A study by Stephanie Shaffer and colleagues
  attempted to find a relationship between parental
  stress and the social behavior of their children.
  
• They found that parent's level of stress, in
  combination with their parenting practices,
  correlated with low scores in obedience and
  social competence in preschool children.

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• So Thank Mom and Dad

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References

• Bredy, Timothy W Diorio, Josie Grant, Rebecca
  J Meaney, Michael J Zhang, Tie Yuan (2004).
  Peripubertal environmental enrichment reverses
  the effects of maternal care on hippocampal
  development and glutamate receptor subunit
  expression. European Journal of Neuroscience. Vol
  20(5).
• Wadhwa, Pathik D. Psychoneuroendocrine Processes
  in Human Pregnancy Influence Fetal Development
  and Health. Psychoneuroendocrinology. Vol 30(8),
  Sep 2005, pp. 724-743
• Lapointe, Leonard. Feral Children. Journal of
  Medical Speech-Language Pathology. Vol 13(1), Mar
  2005, pp. vii-ix
• Anthony, Laura Gutermuth Anthony, Bruno J
  Glanville, Denise N Naiman, Daniel Q Waanders,
  Christine Shaffer, Stephanie The Relationships
  Between Parenting Stress, Parenting Behavior, And
  Behavior Problems in The Classroom. Infant and
  Child Development. Special Issue Parenting
  Stress and Children's Development. Vol 14(2), Jun
  2005, pp. 133-154
• Soraya, Seedat. Stein Murray B., Forde David R.
  Association Between Physical Partner Violence,
  Posttraumatic Stress, Childhood Trauma, and
  Suicide Attempts in a Community Sample of Women
  Violence and Victims. Vol 20(1), Feb 2005, pp.
  87-98