ReviewBiological psychiatry2020
Early Adversity and the Neotenous Human Brain.
Review in Biological psychiatry, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
66 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The effects of childhood adversity: Two specific neural patterns.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Pooled it
- Adverse Life Experiences and Brain Function: A Meta-Analysis of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Findings.JAMA network open · 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
- Neurostructural traces of early life adversities: A meta-analysis exploring age- and adversity-specific effects.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Pooled 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
- Early life visceral stress induces auditory brainstem sensitization and cochlear proteomic alterations in a rat model of irritable bowel syndrome.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Parenting behaviors over time and their effects on cortical and limbic brain structure in children and young adults.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Does Parental Presence Influence Child Performance on an Emotional Go/No-Go Task at Age 9.5? Exploring the Role of Puberty and Early Environmental Quality.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Article
- A Systematic Evaluation of the Performance of Multiple Brain Age Algorithms in Two Cohorts of Youth.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- New directions for complex systems in contemporary neuroscience: a morphodynamic and emergent function approach.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Review
- Self-Processing Circuits Among Depressed Youth After Amygdala Neurofeedback Cued to the Self-Face.Journal of neuroscience research · 2025Article
- Article
- Maternal history of maltreatment interacts with DNA methylation patterns to predict infant temperament.Child abuse & neglect · 2025Article
- The epigenetic impacts of pubertal acceleration following early caregiver disruptions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Neonatal estradiol and early adversity interact to modify basolateral amygdala morphology and adult behavior in female rats.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Investigative Approaches to Resilient Emotion Regulation Neurodevelopment in a South African Birth Cohort.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Person-centered analyses reveal that developmental adversity at moderate levels and neural threat/safety discrimination are associated with lower anxiety in early adulthood.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Potential for the medial prefrontal cortex to link mentalizing and attachment schemas.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Review
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Human brain development is optimized to learn from environmental cues. The protracted development of the cortex and its connections with subcortical targets has been argued to permit more opportunity for acquiring complex behaviors. This review uses the example of amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex circuitry development to illustrate a principle of human development-namely, that the extension of the brain's developmental timeline allows for the (species-expected) collaboration between child and parent in co-construction of the human brain. The neurobiology underlying affective learning capitalizes on this protracted timeline to develop a rich affective repertoire in adulthood. Humans are afforded this luxuriously slow development in part by the extended period of caregiving provided by parents, and parents aid in scaffolding the process of maturation during childhood. Just as adequate caregiving is a potent effector of brain development, so is adverse caregiving, which is the largest environmental risk factor for adult mental illness. There are large individual differences in neurobiological outcomes following caregiving adversity, indicating that these pathways are probabilistic, rather than deterministic, and prolonged plasticity in human brain development may also allow for subsequent amelioration by positive experiences. The extant research indicates that the development of mental health cannot be considered without consideration of children in the context of their families.
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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.