Brittany R. Howell

TL;DR: The overall study protocol is provided, including approaches for subject recruitment, strategies for imaging typically developing children 0–5 years of age without sedation, imaging protocol and optimization, a description of the battery of behavioral assessments, and QA/QC procedures.

TL;DR: These findings highlight the long-term impact of infant maltreatment on brain white matter structural integrity, particularly in tracts involved in visual processing, emotional regulation, and somatosensory and motor integration, and suggest a relationship between elevations in stress hormones detected in maltreated animals during infancy and long- term brainwhite matter structural effects.

TL;DR: This article found that early life adversity accelerates the developmental trajectory of amygdala-prefrontal cortex (PFC) development and modifies emotional behaviors, and that the anatomical circuits supporting emotional functioning are highly preserved across different species, suggesting that the results of studies examining the role of early adversity and emotional functioning should be translatable across species.

TL;DR: Taking advantage of this naturalistic animal model of adverse maternal caregiving, it is shown that competent maternal care is critical for the development of healthy attachment, social behavior, and emotional and stress regulation, as well of the neural circuits underlying these functions.

TL;DR: This review examines the mechanisms underlying the behavioral consequences of early life stress in the context of both reactive scope and reactive scope models, and focuses on adverse experiences that involve mother–infant relationship disruption.