ArticleCurrent opinion in behavioral sciences2016
The Stress Acceleration Hypothesis: Effects of early-life adversity on emotion circuits and behavior.
Article in Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 322 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
322 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effects of childhood adversity: Two specific neural patterns.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Early life adversity and white matter microstructural organization-a systematic review.Brain imaging and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- Sleep During Pregnancy and Offspring Outcomes From Infancy to Childhood: A Systematic Review.Biopsychosocial science and medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Parental Deprivation- and Threat-Based Factors Associated with Youth Emotion-Based Neurocircuitry and Externalizing Behavior: A Systematic Review.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2024Pooled it
- Adverse Childhood Experiences and Primary Headache Disorders: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Application of a Biological Theory.Neurology · 2023Pooled it
- Interpersonal early adversity demonstrates dissimilarity from early socioeconomic disadvantage in the course of human brain development: A meta-analysis.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Preliminary examination of the effects of an early parenting intervention on amygdala-orbitofrontal cortex resting-state functional connectivity among high-risk children: A randomized clinical trial.Development and psychopathology · 2025Trial
- A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Parenting Intervention During Infancy Alters Amygdala-Prefrontal Circuitry in Middle Childhood.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2024Trial
- Dimensions of early life adversity and accelerated biological aging in adolescents: an examination of fear-related mechanisms.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2026Article
- The Transdiagnostic Association Between Childhood Trauma and Accelerated Brain Aging in Two Independent Datasets.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2026Article
- Aversive 22-kHz ultrasonic vocalization playback reveals differences in affective (dys)function following early life adversity in male and female juvenile rats.Behavioural brain research · 2026Article
- Demographics change the relationships between socioeconomic status, white matter network organization, and cognition in children.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sex-specific neurodevelopmental pathways to depressive symptoms.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- The Earliest Impressions: A Systematic Review of Early-Life Exposures on Brain Structure and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Adversity and adolescent brain development: differential associations with grey and white matter across two longitudinal cohorts.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Longitudinal MRI reveals adolescent pituitary growth patterns linked to puberty and environmental exposures.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Disrupted maternal care alters neural-microglia interactions in the primate paralaminar (PL) nucleus of the amygdala.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Early-life stress impairs development of functional interactions and neuronal activity within prefrontal-amygdala networks in vivo.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- An epigenetic framework for understanding contextual influences on neural and socio-emotional development: Narrative review and case-study of the oxytocin receptor.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- Timing and tempo of puberty and neurodevelopment following adversity: A registered report.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
262 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The importance of early experiences for mental health across the lifespan is well recognized. In particular, there is a strong association between adverse caregiving experiences and mental illness. However, relative to studies assessing outcomes in adults, there are far fewer studies assessing the earlier emerging manifestations of caregiving adversity during development. This lack of developmental research limits an understanding of the mechanisms that link adversity with mental illness. Adoption of a developmental approach to research in this field will yield greater insights into the factors that tie adversity to poor emotion function across a lifespan. In this review, we focus on recent findings that have used a developmental approach in the examination of mental health and early adversity. These studies are notable in that, across numerous species, they converge on the idea that early adversity leads to accelerated maturation of emotion circuits in the brain and in the behaviors supported by these regions. We propose that these 'stress acceleration' effects are evidence of early system adaptation.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.