Active behaviour during early development shapes glucocorticoid reactivity

TGlucocorticoids are the final effectors of the stress axis, with numerous targets in the central nervous system and the periphery. They are essential for adaptation, yet currently it is unclear how early life events program the glucocorticoid response to stress. Here we provide evidence that involuntary swimming at early developmental stages can reconfigure the cortisol response to homotypic and heterotypic stress in larval zebrafish (Danio rerio), also reducing startle reactivity and increasing spontaneous activity as well as energy efficiency during active behaviour. Collectively, these data identify a role of the genetically malleable zebrafish for linking early life stress with glucocorticoid function in later life

Imitation promotes affiliation in infant macaques at risk for impaired social behaviors

Parental responsiveness and synchronization during early face-to-face interactions between mother and infant have been theorized to affect a broad spectrum of positive developmental outcomes in social and cognitive infant growth and to facilitate the development of a sense of self in the baby. Here we show that being imitated can significantly affect the behavior of nursery-reared infant monkeys, which are at an increased risk for developing aberrant social behaviors. Infants look longer and lipsmack more at an experimenter both during imitation and after being imitated. These results demonstrate that from early in life imitation might be used as a privileged form of communication by adults to enhance infants’ visual engagement and their social communication. Imitation may therefore be useful to counteract the negative effects of early social adversities

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children: Heterogeneity in the development of emotion understanding

Post-institutionalized Chinese and Eastern European children participated in two emotion understandingtasks. In one task, children selected facial expressions corresponding to four emotion labels(happy, sad, angry, scared). The second task required children to match facial expressions to storiesdescribing situations for these emotions. While both post-institutionalized groups scored lower thanthe never-institutionalized children, those from China performed better than those from EasternEurope. Post-institutionalized children’s performance was predicted by their age at adoption