Arcego, Danusa Mar

Dalmaz, Carla

Lima, Randriely Merscher Sobreira de

Pereira, Natividade de Sá Couto

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience

English

Lume 5.8

TYPE EditorialPUBLISHED 17 May 2023DOI 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1209494OPEN ACCESSEDITED AND REVIEWED BYDenise Manahan-Vaughan,Ruhr University Bochum, Germany*CORRESPONDENCERandriely Merscher Sobreira de Limarandriely@gmail.comRECEIVED 20 April 2023ACCEPTED 05 May 2023PUBLISHED 17 May 2023CITATIONde Lima RMS, Couto Pereira NS, Dalmaz C andMar Arcego D (2023) Editorial: Early life events:shedding light on neurobiological mechanisms.Front. Behav. Neurosci. 17:1209494.doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1209494COPYRIGHT© 2023 de Lima, Couto Pereira, Dalmaz andMar Arcego. This is an open-access articledistributed under the terms of the CreativeCommons Attribution License (CC BY). The use,distribution or reproduction in other forums ispermitted, provided the original author(s) andthe copyright owner(s) are credited and thatthe original publication in this journal is cited, inaccordance with accepted academic practice.No use, distribution or reproduction ispermitted which does not comply with theseterms.Editorial: Early life events:shedding light on neurobiologicalmechanismsRandriely Merscher Sobreira de Lima1,2*,Natividade de Sá Couto Pereira3, Carla Dalmaz4 andDanusa Mar Arcego21Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, 2Douglas Mental Health UniversityInstitute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, 3Psychological Neuroscience Laboratory, PsychologyResearch Centre, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal, 4Departamento deBioquímica, Instituto de Ciências Básicas da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, PortoAlegre, BrazilKEYWORDSearly life adversity, stress, development, child development, early environmentEditorial on the Research TopicEarly life events: shedding light on neurobiological mechanismsEarly life experiences may impact the development, affecting neural, behavioral, andpsychological domains (Kessler et al., 2010; Couto-Pereira et al., 2019). These experiencescan shape individual differences in neural plasticity and behavior with lifelong effects.Environmental conditions present in the early perinatal and prepubertal periods have asubstantial influence on an individual’s susceptibility or resilience, as these periods undergocritical changes during this time (Belsky and Pluess, 2013). The effects of adverse conditionsin early life have been observed to affect the development of brain functioning and otherbiological systems, increasing vulnerability to diseases and behavioral changes later in life(de Lima et al., 2020). Although many studies recognize the relationship between the qualityof the early environment and the influence on multiple aspects of child development,little is known about the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this association. A deeperunderstanding of this interplay will shed light on the neurobiological basis of an individual’slong-term vulnerability to disease. By gathering innovative contributions in this area, weaimed to advance the knowledge of how early environments lead to different phenotypesconcerning vulnerability or resilience to stress later in life. The contributions comprising thisspecial issue cover a range from animal models to translational papers studying children’sbehavior and brain’s functional connectivity, as depicted in Figure 1.In Neurobiological mechanisms involved in maternal deprivation-induced behaviorsrelevant to psychiatric disorders, Zanta et al. provides an updated appraisal of the effectsof maternal deprivation, an animal model of parental loss. This procedure may lead toincreased susceptibility in animal models of mental disorders, in particular related todepression, anxiety, and schizophrenia, and the authors argue for some putativemechanismsthat could explain the behavioral outcomes. That sex-dimorphic effects were observed inmost of the neurobiological outcomes is of indisputable importance. The review coversfrom immediate effects to long-term outcomes involving the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenalaxis, neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, neurotransmitter, neuromodulatory systems, andneuroinflammation, relating effects on these processes with the observed behavioral changes.Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 01 frontiersin.orgde Lima et al. 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1209494FIGURE 1The influence of early life environment on brain development. The figure summarizes the studies that composed the Research Topic: Early LifeEvents: Shedding Light on Neurobiological Mechanisms.Two studies consider different animal models of variantearly environments and their influence on cognition. Masticationstimuli enhance the learning ability of weaning-stage rats, alteringthe hippocampal neuron transcriptome and micromorphology,conducted by Yasuoka et al. sheds light on the correlationbetween masticatory stimulation and memory using powdered orsolid diets during a sensitive period of development. The studyinvestigates neural interaction between mastication stimuli andmemory processing, hippocampal transcriptome, and dendritemorphology. The results reveal that mastication stimuli during theweaning period have a positive effect on rat’s memory function,probably through the increase of dendrite branches of hippocampalCA1 neurons and gene regulation related to dendrite growth. Thesefindings underscore the importance of adequate mastication duringdevelopmental periods for proper brain function.The second study, Altered cognition and anxiety in adolescentoffspring whose mothers underwent different-pattern maternal sleepdeprivation, and cognition link to hippocampal expressions of Bdnfand Syt-1, is based on the evidence that sleep disturbance duringpregnancy may negatively affect the development of offspring.Wei et al. investigated the association between sleep deprivationin late pregnancy with emotion, cognition, and expression ofsynaptic plasticity-related proteins in offspringmice. Pregnantmicewere used for studying the different patterns and durations ofsleep deprivation. The results demonstrated that maternal sleepdeprivation during late pregnancy impairs emotion and cognitionin offspring, which is associated with altered hippocampal bdnf andsyt1 expression.Two studies examined exposure to early adversities inchildren. In Examining resting-state network connectivity inchildren exposed to perinatal maternal adversity using anatomicallyweighted functional connectivity (awFC) analyses; A preliminaryreport, Ayyash et al. explored adversity-related changes using aninnovative approach to brain imaging analysis, that combinesfunctional and structural connectivity, the awFC. Compared tocontrols, children whose mothers had poor mental health and/orlow socioeconomic status during the perinatal period exhibitedlower connectivity in some cortical and limbic networks, butincreased connectivity in the ventral attention network. The awFCapproach highlighted the importance of accounting for structuralaspects when assessing functional connectivity in developmentalnetworks. This study provides further support that early lifestress impacts the course of brain maturation, specifically thedevelopmental tuning of functional and structural connectivity.Early life experiences are the basis of a child’s health duringdevelopment and early life caregiving adversity may influencefuture negative memory biases. The study Variation in maternalsensitivity and the development of memory biases in preschoolersby Rifkin-Graboi et al. explored whether insensitive care predictssubsequent memory biases for threatening stimuli in preschoolers,and if such relations could influence different forms of memoriesand hippocampal volume. Using data from the Two WaveStudy, the authors showed that exposure to insensitive caregivingpredicted the difference between emotional memories which wereassociated with hippocampal body volumes. The study highlightsthat lower levels of maternal sensitivity when children were fourFrontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 02 frontiersin.orgde Lima et al. 10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1209494and a half years of age predicted better relational memory whenangry stimuli were involved.These studies underline the need for additional researchfocusing on the effects of stress during early developmentalstages, when brain circuits are still maturing and adapting,in order to better understand how stress imprints intoneural circuits and changes their functioning throughoutlife. In the future, this understanding of the mechanismsassociated with early life adversity may help to betterestablish protective strategies. In addition, filling theknowledge gap on sexual dimorphism in the neurobiologicalmechanisms of early life stress, as well as how protectivestrategies may reverse several of those effects will allowthe development of more accurate treatments for a set ofpsychiatric disorders.Author contributionsRMSL, NSCP, CD, and DMA wrote, reviewed,and edited the editorial manuscript. All authorscontributed to the article and approved thesubmitted version.Conflict of interestThe authors declare that the research was conductedin the absence of any commercial or financial relationshipsthat could be construed as a potential conflictof interest.Publisher’s noteAll claims expressed in this article are solely thoseof the authors and do not necessarily represent those oftheir affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher,the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may beevaluated in this article, or claim that may be made byits manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by thepublisher.ReferencesBelsky, J., and Pluess, M. (2013). Beyond risk, resilience, and dysregulation:phenotypic plasticity and human development. Dev. Psychopathol. 25, 1243–1261.doi: 10.1017/S095457941300059XCouto-Pereira, N. S., Lampert, C., Vieira, A. D. S., Lazzaretti, C., Kincheski,G. C., Espejo, P. J., et al. (2019). Resilience and vulnerability to trauma:early life interventions modulate aversive memory reconsolidation in thedorsal hippocampus. Front. Mol. Neurosci. 28, 134. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2019.00134de Lima, R. M. S., Barth, B., Arcego, D. M., de Mendonça Filho, E. J., Clappison,A., Patel, S., et al. (2020). Amygdala 5-HTT gene network moderates the effectsof postnatal adversity on attention problems: anatomo-functional correlation andepigenetic changes. Front Neurosci. 17, 198. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00198Kessler, R. C., McLaughlin, K. A., Green, J. G., Gruber, M. J., Sampson, N. A.,Zaslavsky, A. M., et al. (2010). Childhood adversities and adult psychopathologyin the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. Br J Psychiatry. 197, 378–385.doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.110.080499Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 03 frontiersin.org

Editorial : early life events : shedding light on neurobiological mechanisms

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Editorial : early life events : shedding light on neurobiological mechanisms

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