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Children who experience neglect, abuse and poverty have a tougher time as adults than do well-cared-for kids. Now there’s evidence that such stress can actually change the size of brain structures responsible for learning, memory and processing emotion. The finding is in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
那些遭受过忽视、虐待、和贫困的孩子在长大后过的生活比那些在呵护中成长的孩子还要艰难。现在，有证据显示，上述压力能改变负责学习、记忆、和情绪处理的脑结构的大小。此发现发表在《生物心理学》期刊中。
Researchers took images of the brains of 12-year-olds who had suffered either physical abuse or neglect or had grown up poor. From the images the scientists were able to measure the size of the amygdala and hippocampus—two structures involved in emotional processing and memory. And they compared the sizes of these structures with those of 12-year-old children who were raised in middle-class families and had not been abused. And they found that the stressed children had significantly smaller amygdalas and hippocampuses than did the kids from the more nurturing environments.
研究人员拍摄了一些图片，这些图片均取自遭受过躯体虐待、忽视、或贫困的12岁孩童。科学家从这些图片中可以测量出杏仁核和海马区的大小——这两个脑结构均涉及情绪的处理和记忆。他们又将这些数据和那些从中产家庭出身、没受过虐待的12岁孩童的脑结构相关数据作比较。结果发现，那些受过上述压力的孩童，其杏仁核和海马区的大小明显小于那些从良好环境中成长的孩童的杏仁核和海马区的大小。
Early stress has been associated with depression, anxiety, cancer and lack of career success later on in adulthood. This study on the sizes of brain regions may offer physiological clues to why what happens to toddlers can have such a profound impact decades later.
早期压力和沮丧、焦虑、癌症、以及长大后事业的失败有关。对脑区域大小的研究或许能为解释“幼童期发生的事为什么会对数十年后的生活带来如此深刻的影响”这一问题提供生理线索。
