January 30, 2012

expert reaction to study of maternal support and hippocampus size

A paper published in PNAS found that the volume of the hippocampus correlated with childhood depression and with maternal behaviour in early childhood.

Dorothy Bishop, Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at the University of Oxford, said:

“This study looked for relationships between childhood depression, maternal behaviour in early childhood (age 3 to 5 years) and size of the hippocampus, a key brain region for memory and emotion, measured a few years later when children were aged between 7 and 13 years. Maternal behaviour was observed as children coped with a mildly stressful task. The authors emphasise how non-depressed children with supportive mothers had larger hippocampal volumes than the other children, but at least as interesting is a failure to find any link between hippocampal volume and childhood depression or adverse life events.

“This study is suggestive, but the reported correlation was not strong and was just one finding among many predicted associations, most of which were not confirmed. As the authors note, the study needs replicating and does not prove a causal relationship.”

Dr Andrea Danese, Clinical Lecturer in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, said:

“Parenting research gives more food for thought. In the same way as a balanced diet provides children with ingredients for healthy physical growth, supportive parental care may provide them with key building blocks for positive psychological development.

“This new research adds an important biological dimension to our understanding, suggesting that differences in parenting behaviour are linked to differences in the volume of children’s hippocampus, a brain region relevant to cognition and emotion.

“Future research will need to clarify whether children of more supportive parents inherit better brains, or whether parenting practices can indeed modify the way the brain changes and develops over time.”

‘Maternal support in early childhood predicts larger hippocampal volumes at school age’ by Luby, J. et al. published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday 30th January.