Chapter 4: Trauma and Brain Development
from the book "RootEd: How Trauma Impacts Learning and Society" by S.R. Zelenz
This was previously sent out on Substack in 2021 (Published in July 2020). Today, I will provide the links to the rest of the book at the bottom of the preface so that you can read it in its entirety. Some of the chapters are available to read for free. If you would like to have full access to the entire book, you can upgrade to a paid subscription of $7/month. This book is currently being sold in print worldwide at the following link:
Introduction
There are two distinct ages when the brain is vulnerable to trauma due to high neurological development. Researcher, Jay Geidd, M.d., has found that up until the age of 5 to 6 years old, children develop 95% of the structure of their brain (2014). A secondary phase of development occurs in the prefrontal cortex around 11 to 12 years, just before puberty (Geid, 2014). These are the two phases when children find themselves facing the reactions adults have to their newly inspired independence.
Toddlers suddenly want to explore independently of their parents, and are frequently told no, put in the corner (separation from love or nurture), spanked, or put in some form of limiting situation. Outside of any opinion relating to the methods used by the parent or caregiver, the experience the child has is restriction of their independence followed by some form of trauma to reinforce this. This becomes a fixed pain memory.
It can also inhibit the growth and development of the brain. This was found to be especially true in a study done with Romanian orphans after the fall of communist Romania. Babies were not held due to fear of germs; however, they were provided all necessities. It was found that the babies who were not held grew up to become adults with mental health issues and found functioning in the adult world difficult (Hamilton, 2014). It has been found that lack of physical connection, loving interactions, affection, and closeness decreases brain development, which later results in mental health issues (Hamilton, 2014). One could easily argue that physical abuse, such as spanking, slapping, or any kind of physical aggression intended as discipline can be received by the child’s developing brain as trauma.
Carrion and colleagues (2009) found that children who experience emotional distress at a young age have higher incidence of cortisol, a stress hormone, and decreased hippocampus size. Children with these symptoms also demonstrated emotional challenges and difficulties with memory recall. Treadway and colleagues (2019) identified how certain people are more sensitive to inflammation impacting the brain resulting in lack of motivation. Since there is no way to know which children will be predisposed to inflammation, as a result of trauma, impacting their brain development and how it results in dispositions such as depression, schizophrenia, or other impairments, it is worth considering that the way children are treated should be given more consideration with regard to the trauma they are being required to endure under the guise of discipline.
Evolutionary Purpose
Since Darwin’s scientific position on evolution, there has been much research on human development. One psychiatrist, Randolph Nesse, is one of the founders of evolutionary medicine. He has written that natural selection does not remove psychiatric disorders from human evolution for a reason. 20% of Americans are currently suffering from some sort of mental illness and nearly 50% will experience mental illness at one or more periods in their lifetime. Dr. Nesse attributes this to our genes being impacted by our surroundings with little regard to our current scenario (Nesse, 2019). One could label this as part of epigenetic programming. Another might say that this is programmed trauma conditioning. Both are likely correct and work in tandem.
Our responses may very well be epigenetic memory from experiences that our ancestors had. So, this also offers the potential for epigenetic trauma memory to be passed down to future generations to ensure survival of the species. I will discuss epigenetics in much more detail in chapter six. What makes this challenging for those treating people who demonstrate mental illness, is identifying if this is in response to a current trauma, an inherited trauma, or pathological. Better yet, is the pathological issue really an inherited trauma? Although I would not dismiss pathology having a much wider influence on brain functionality and neurological processes, epigenetics is definitely a wild card that is harder to manage as a therapist than something that can be worked through as a current trauma or a pathological malfunction due to biological issues.
Development
Evolution applies to all species, not just humanity. It has also been found that lack of self-control in adolescence is also not unique to humanity. Primates and humans alike appear to go through the same neurological developmental phases (Constantinidis & Luna, 2019).
As is widely known, adolescence is a time of heightened impulsivity and sensation-seeking, leading to questionable choices. However, this behavioral tendency is based on an adaptive neurobiological process that is crucial for molding the brain based on gaining new experiences…They have a developed prefrontal cortex and follow a similar trajectory with the same patterns of maturation between adolescence and adulthood. (Luna, 2019, pp.604-605)
This developmental phase provides key information about the environment in order for the primate or human to develop more specialized facets in the brain (Constantinidis & Luna, 2019). This is a key developmental factor tied to cognitive maturation (Constantinidis & Luna, 2019). As a result of this tendency toward impulsivity and the responses from the adults, the developing mind learns to navigate the obstacles and risks.
With this in mind, it is easy to understand that if an adult aggressively responds to the adolescent, they learn that the adult is a threat. This will further program their mind to learn to do what they want to do without being noticed by the adult in order to avoid the adult’s response. This is why in traditionally raised households, we see children rebelling and sneaking around, especially in their teen years. Instead of learning survival skills that would be the ultimate goal of the adults, the teen learns to avoid authority to not experience the same reaction again.
The same can also be found in nations with former dictatorships. It is incredibly difficult to take a programmed society and expect them to understand democracy or how to behave in a manner that is collaborative if there is anyone in the society who implements any form of limitation or control. This has been especially obvious in our most recent COVID-19 pandemic. Observing behaviors across nations has been truly interesting. Those with former dictatorships tend to behave in manners similar to sneaky teenage behavior. Those who were used to oppressing other groups are rebelling dramatically against being controlled themselves. Those in societies that have been more universally supportive (socialist in nature) have been much less resistant, and thus needed fewer external controls implemented. Those in current dictatorships were already used to knowing they had to follow the rules or experience potentially lethal consequences. Rebellion isn’t really an option for them. This type of leadership takes immense levels of abusive threats to continuously implement, and it creates a society that will never know how to behave when they are in other countries that do not operate this way. When they are in another country, they tend to misbehave more because they have no idea how to handle freedom.
Frequent strategies to motivate “good” behavior are what has been commonly known as award system training. This goes back to the previously mentioned operant conditioning identified by B.F. Skinner. Recent research has utilized artificial intelligence to identify that the dopamine system actually operates by training the prefrontal cortex “to operate as its own free-standing learning system” (Wang et al., 2018, p. 860). This may support other learning, but it is important to note how it is a completely different learning system and the portion of the brain targeted by this type of training is directly involved in the same portion of the brain responsible for impulsivity and risk. This actually poses concern since what this would suggest is that training the area of the brain that is responsible for risk taking and impulsivity is being trained without awareness of how that impacts the overall intellectual capacity of the individual. That is to say it has no bearing on the individual learning any material other than behavioral award. It also programs this portion of the brain to avoid negative consequences, which then promotes behavior that will navigate around the controls which inhibit direct participation. For some individuals, this will help them to know to not do certain things when certain people are around, but it by no means teaches them to not do these things when authority is absent. Self-control is never developed.
Strong evidence indicates that reciprocal connections between the amygdala and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) support fundamental aspects of emotional behavior in adulthood. However, this circuitry is slow to develop in humans, exhibiting immaturity in childhood. The argument is made that the development of this circuitry in humans is intimately associated with caregiving, such that parental availability during childhood provides important and enduring scaffolding of neuroaffective processes that ultimately form of the nature of the adult phenotype. (Tottenham, 2015, p. 489)
This could also feed into the issues that appear to be so common in American classrooms. In the last two decades the numbers of children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder has skyrocketed. The same can be said for autism and diagnoses associated with behavioral issues. With the type of caregiving provided to children in America, it is concerning to see these numbers increase so dramatically. If these were truly biologically detrimental issues, then treatment would be warranted. However, it would appear that the increased pressure schools have to demand performance from students through standardized examinations and increasing traumatic experiences on campus and off, it would be more appropriate to question the environment we are subjecting the children to rather than masking their symptoms with medication so that we continue business as usual.
Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has discovered that various psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depression, and various other attention disorders display an inability for two different brain regions to communicate. They attribute it to the ERbB4 gene, a receptor of neuregulin-1. "Our findings give importance to synchrony between the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus in top-down attention and open up the possibility that attention deficit disorders, like ADHD, might involve impairments in the synchrony between these two regions" (Mei et al., 2018, p. 391). It is important to acknowledge the gene impact of this as it is also something that could very easily be implicated in epigenetic memory, as will be discussed in chapter six.
Dopamine is also a factor that up until now, has not been considered deeply important in the learning process. Wang and colleagues have identified that dopamine plays an integral role in the meta-learning process (2016). Their research has identified that dopamine not only strengthens synaptic links in the prefrontal cortex system, which reinforces behavior, but it also transmits and embeds important details about abstract tasks and rule structures in order to adapt to new tasks easily (Wang et al., 2016). The dopamine is what produces this transfer of information which provides versatility not found in the synapse structures alone (Wang et al., 2016).
Dopamine is an important endogenous catecholamine which exerts widespread effects both in neuronal (as a neurotransmitter) and non-neuronal tissues (as an autocrine or paracrine agent). Within the central nervous system, dopamine binds to specific membrane receptors presented by neurons and it plays the key role in the control of locomotion, learning, working memory, cognition, and emotion. The brain dopamine system is involved in various neurological and psychiatric disturbances such as Parkinson's Disease, schizophrenia, and amphetamine and cocaine addiction. (Drozak & Bryla, 2005, p. 405.
What this signifies is the implication of how the learning experience can impact the processing of information through the dopamine system.
Childhood trauma is a risk factor for psychosis. Amphetamine increases synaptic striatal dopamine levels and can induce positive psychotic symptoms in healthy individuals and patients with schizophrenia. Socio-developmental hypotheses of psychosis propose that childhood trauma and other environmental risk factors sensitize the dopamine system to increase the risk of psychotic symptoms, but this remains to be tested in humans. (Dahoun et al., 2019 p. 1)
In addition to the potential for psychological dysregulation as a result of traumatic learning experiences, it has also been found to impact the ability to empathize with others, which is a common issue found in those who have been diagnosed with various attention deficit disorders. One area of study that has been integral in understanding how the brain learns is the study of music. This research has been found to demonstrate increased neurotransmitter development in those who have studied music versus those who have not. (Gangrade, 2012). Increased neurotransmitter development improves connectivity between different regions of the brain and accelerates learning (Gangrade, 2012). Additionally, researchers have identified how those who demonstrate higher levels of empathy tend to choose pro-social decision-making when observing others and this can be observed through MRI scans in mirror regions of the brain (Christov-Moore and Iacoboni, 2016; Christov-Moore et al., 2017b).
It would be very likely that without the additional support of music education, the traumas experienced in the learning environment, home environment, or society would create irreconcilable shortages in brain development for many students who would then fail to empathize with others and be productive members of society. This is not to say that music education should replace healthy learning and home environments. It should be used in addition to these. It is not a band-aid. To assume as much would be to gravely misunderstand the importance of healthy environment creation. However, for students who were experiencing grave trauma, music has often been a major salvation not only for their intellectual development, but also as a trauma coping mechanism.
Trauma’s Influence on Brain Development
Stress impacts our daily lives. It has repercussions that can influence our overall physical and psychological health. Research into how stress impacts the brain and brain development has shed light on how seriously we need to consider its impact on children in our learning environments. As pressure to perform mounts in classrooms across America and in many other nations, we see students exhibiting signs of significant stress and emotional instability. Pairing this with the developmental stages the children’s brains are going through, and it is a recipe for disaster. What makes this scenario worse is when the children are reinforced through aggressive or psychologically abusive tactics to force performance.
Researchers in Zurich have recently identified how the brain changes in direct correlation to stress. The neurotransmitter noradrenaline is released during times of great stress. When this occurs, it rewires patterns between different regions of the brain (Zerbi et al., 2019). It was also noted that amygdala activity and surrounding networks that process sensory stimuli were increased (Zerbi et al., 2019). The purpose of this reaction is to aid the person in making life-or-death decisions based upon environmental cues (Zerbi et al., 2019). In turn, this efficiently establishes functional networks between various areas of the brain (Zerbi et al., 2019). The areas affected process sensory stimuli in the visual and auditory center of the brain (Zerbi et al., 2019). The amygdala network is associated with states of anxiety. Pairing this with the development of the prefrontal cortex, which as mentioned previously, controls impulsivity and we find the brain operating in a heightened state of stress which will condition the development of the brain itself.
A study done on children who were institutionalized in Romania found that children who were placed in foster care showed better recovery from the adversity but found that boys overall did not adjust as well as the girls (Zeanah et al., 2009). They found that no manner of intervention changed the long-term psychological trajectory for the boys who spent any time in their formative years institutionalized (Zeanah et al., 2009). Instead, they found increased instances of mental illness into adulthood as a result of this experience where they were not provided adequate nurturing early in life (Zeanah et al., 2009). Although most children in America do not live in orphanages, there are many children who spend far more time in daycare centers than they do in their homes with family members. With the number of children being cared for in any daycare setting, children who are under the age of 5 are not likely to receive the level of intimate nurturing that is essential to healthy psychological brain development.
I have observed daycare scenarios where some children were put into a playpen and then placed in the bathroom so that they did not disturb the other children during nap time. Others would isolate a child in another room to punish them for behavior. Childcare providers spend more time entertaining and feeding the children than they do holding them, making them feel heard, and validating their emotions. Many childcare providers talk to the children in a manner that looks like they are feigning attention to the child, but they aren’t really listening to the child’s feelings or points. They may nod their head, say some things that sound like they are listening, but they don’t really hear the child. This eventually leads to a child having a tantrum or other unruly behavior in order to demand to be heard. Then the child is punished for this display of inappropriate behavior. Who is to blame in this scenario?
Researchers Tottenham and colleagues (2009) found that the longer a child is institutionalized, the larger their amygdala volume, which increases emotional regulation difficulties. It has also been identified that a lack of a stable caregiver has been proven to be a potent stressor to developing infants (Johnson, 2002). Although most research has only just begun to focus on the psychological impact of children adopted from orphanages, there remains to be adequate research (or any) done on the impact of childcare centers on the developing brains of infants and toddlers. With the constant changing of staff, it was found that the children in one orphanage found them to have inconsistent nurturing from any one particular caregiver (Smyke et al., 2007). It was even found that children as young as four months old who experienced such scenarios displayed emotional disruptions which reflected a more heightened emotional reactivity and an increased prevalence of anxiety disorders when compared to those who were cared for by a consistent caregiver during these early formative years (Ames, 1997; Ellis, Fisher, & Zaharie, 2004; Hodges & Tizzard, 1989). Paired with this increased emotional dysregulation, anxiety and increased amygdala size due to early childhood stress, it is found that it matures the brain faster, but only during this period of development. Maturity in this sense results in inflexibility.
The brain is the key organ of stress processes. It determines what individuals will experience as stressful, it orchestrates how individuals will cope with stressful experiences, and it changes both functionally and structurally as a result of stressful experiences. Within the brain, a distributed, dynamic, and plastic neural circuitry coordinates, monitors, and calibrates behavioral and physiological stress response systems to meet the demands imposed by particular stressors. These allodynamic processes can be adaptive in the short term (allostasis) and maladaptive in the long term (allostatic load). Critically, these processes involve bidirectional signaling between the brain and body. Consequently, allostasis and allostatic load can jointly affect vulnerability to brain-dependent and stress-related mental and physical health conditions. (McEwan & Gianaros, 2011, Abstract)
Evolutionary response to stress is to prepare the person or animal experiencing the stress to develop more rapidly in order to survive (Tyborowska et al., 2018).
More personal early-life stressful events were associated with larger developmental reductions in GMV over anterior prefrontal cortex, amygdala and other subcortical regions; whereas ongoing stress from the adolescents’ social environment was related to smaller reductions over the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortex. These findings suggest that early-life stress accelerates pubertal development, whereas an adverse adolescent social environment disturbs brain maturation with potential mental health implications: delayed anterior cingulate maturation was associated with more antisocial traits – a juvenile precursor of psychopathy. (Tyborowska et al., 2018, Abstract)
What Tyborowska and colleagues (2018) have identified is that the stress experienced in childhood (0-5) speeds up the cerebral development, yet stress in adolescence (14-17) has the opposite effect. Due to the inflexibility that was developed due to early childhood stress, the adolescent brain is less capable of adjusting to stressors as it cannot adjust for current experiences. The long-term results are increased probability of developing antisocial personality disorders that can range up to full psychopathology. Bloomfield and colleagues (2019) also found that a lifetime of adversity also impairs essential dopamine production to aid one in coping with stressful situations.
Cortisol is another factor that is involved during stressful situations. It is released during moments of stress that result in the fight or flight response. Although, the full responses are more than these two. We will see fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses in those who are experiencing stressful situations that put them into survival mode. Fight results in obvious aggressive self-defense behavior. Flight means running from a stressful situation. Freeze is observed as someone who cannot make a decision or do anything when in a stressful situation. Fawn is the person who will please the abuser in order to survive the situation by being amenable. Cortisol is the key ingredient to all of these responses. Those who have experienced childhood trauma have demonstrated DNA level gene expression that had low levels of glucocorticoid receptors, meaning that cortisol is unable to bind to these receptors, thus providing decreased capacity to be resilient to stress (Hyman, 2009). This level of change is then passed on epigenetically to future generations as will be discussed in a later chapter.
So why is the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and cortisol so important? Other than the previously mentioned developmental effects from stress, it is important to understand how these play a role in healthy brain function and pro-social behavior. One factor is moral judgment. Moral judgment is how one evaluates what is right and wrong based upon social norms (Jonathan, 2003; Prehn et al., 2007). The issue lies in whether the individual makes these moral judgments based upon personal experience or through cognitive processing (Dashtestani et al., 2018). Many studies have demonstrated how some participants make their moral judgments not only on rational thoughts, but also through emotions (Glen, Raine, & Schug, 2009; Greene et al. 2004, 2001; Han, Chen, Jeong, & Glover, 2016; Han, Glover, & Jeong, 2014; Koenigs et al., 2007; Prehn et al., 2007). If one’s mind has been developed through stress, it is going to be prone to make emotional decisions before it makes rational ones. The influence of these well-developed patterns will play a pivotal role in decision making.
Researchers have found that children who demonstrate callous behaviors have different brain structures than those who do not demonstrate these behaviors (Koen et al., 2018). Callous traits are key risk factors for antisocial behavior, which include a lack of empathy, remorselessness, and shallow affect (Hare & Neumann, 2008). Callous traits in childhood are identified through a broader set of traits relating to unemotional or psychopathic traits as analyzed through a subgroup of children with conduct problems identified by the DSM-5 as low prosocial emotions (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). These traits distinguish themselves through severe and chronic antisocial behavior presentation (Viding & McCrory, 2018). Identification of these traits has proven to be spanned beyond childhood, predicting potential for adult psychopathy, personality disorders, substance abuse, and criminal behavior (Blair, White, Meffert, & Hwang, 2014).
When considering the caretaking experience children have with childcare providers and within their homes, it is important to note these effects on the child’s brain development and how that impacts them in the classroom. Many teachers and administrators have resorted to yelling at students to get their attention or to address them for infractions. These responses from the adults are irrespective of the child’s brain development or trauma experience. These responses are based upon the programmed responses the adult developed in their own childhood. It is important to note the responsibility any adult has when providing care or education to any child. The effects are lifelong. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland discovered that people notice what is said to them faster if it is yelled at them than when it is spoken in a normal tone (Burra et al., 2019). The brain identifies the sound as a threat and sends the mind into fight or flight response, thus triggering a trauma response and setting for the previously mentioned brain structure changes (Burra et al., 2019). This is to enable our mind to adapt to a survival threat quickly. If the adults want to be considered a threat to a child’s survival, then we are sending the wrong message to children about what adults should represent to them in this world. One would hope that the adults would want the children to feel safe with them and know that they can rely upon the adults to protect and provide for them, not be a source of threat for their very survival. Young minds only know what they are exposed to.
All Chapters (some are free to read)
Introduction: Dangerous Society
Chapter 3: The Results of Programmed Narcissism
Chapter 4: Trauma and Brain Development
Chapter 6: Epigenetic Trauma Inheritance
Chapter 7: The Purpose Behind Education
Chapter 8: The Purpose Behind Behavioral Conditioning
Chapter 9: Behavioral Conditioning for Schools and Capitalism
Chapter 11: Common Parenting Practices