How strokes can affect brain development in children

Stroke may affect a child’s brain development in similar ways to severe forms of violence, according to a new study led by Harvard researchers.

The research, recently published in the journal Child development, builds on existing studies showing increased activity in certain regions of the brain of children experiencing abuse in response to threats.

The group found that children who were beaten had a greater neural response in several regions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), including in regions that were part of the striking network. These parts of the brain respond to clues in the environment that can usually be consequential, such as a threat, and that can influence decision-making and processing situations.

“We know that children whose families use corporal punishment are more likely to develop anxiety, depression, behavioral problems and other mental health problems, but many people do not think that striking is a form of violence,” said Katie A. McLaughlin. John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences, Director of the Stress & Development Lab in the Department of Psychology, and the senior researcher on the study. “In this study, we wanted to investigate whether there was an impact of beats at the neurobiological level, in terms of how the brain develops.”

According to the authors of the study, corporal punishment has been linked to the development of mental health issues, anxiety, depression, behavioral problems and drug use disorders. Recent studies show that about half of parents in U.S. studies have touched their children in the past year and a third in the past week. However, the link between beats and brain activity has not been studied before.

McLaughlin and her colleagues – including Jorge Cuartas, first author of the study and a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and David Weissman, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology’s stress and development laboratory – shared data of a large study of children between the ages of three and 11. They focused on 147 children who were between 10 and 11 years old, who were excluded, excluding children who also experienced worse forms of violence.

Each child lay in an MRI machine and watched a computer screen display different images of actors making ‘fear’ and ‘neutral’ faces. A scanner captured the child’s brain activity in response to each type of face, and the images were analyzed to determine if the faces evoked different patterns of brain activity in children who were beaten compared to those who were not.

‘On average, frightening faces across the sample elicited greater activation than neutral faces in many regions of the brain … and children who were beaten showed greater activation in several regions of PFC to fear compared to neutral faces than children who never was not beaten, ”wrote researchers.

In contrast, ”

The findings are consistent with similar research done on children who have experienced severe violence, suggesting that ‘although we may not view corporal punishment as a form of violence, in terms of how a child’s brain responds, it not everything is other than abuse. “It’s more of a grade difference than a type,” McLaughlin said.

According to researchers, the study is a first step towards further interdisciplinary analysis of the potential effects of striking power on children’s brain development and experiences.

“These findings are in line with predictions from other perspectives on the potential consequences of corporal punishment,” he studied in fields such as developmental psychology and social work, Cuartas said. “By identifying certain neural pathways that explain the effects of corporal punishment in the brain, we can further suggest that this type of punishment may be detrimental to children and that we have more opportunities to investigate it.”

However, they noted that their findings do not apply to the individual life of each child.

“It’s important to keep in mind that corporal punishment does not affect every child in the same way, and that children can be resilient if exposed to potential adversity,” Cuartas said. “But the important message is that corporal punishment is a risk that can increase potential problems for children’s development, and according to a precautionary principle, parents and policymakers should try to reduce its incidence.”

Ultimately, McLaughlin added, “we are hopeful that this finding can encourage families not to use this strategy, and that it may open people’s eyes to the possible negative consequences of corporal punishment in ways they have not thought of before. ”