9 ms·

Impact of early life adversity on reward processing in young adults (2014)

125 points by sandwichsphinx 2y ago

FrustratedMonky 2y ago
So, is this just a way to do early measurements, to determine if someone might develop ADHD later. Not any indicator of things to 'do' to help not develop ADHD later? No actions to take? " In contrast, during reward delivery, activation of the bilateral insula, right pallidum and bilateral putamen increased with EFA. There was a significant association of lifetime ADHD symptoms with lower activation in the left ventral striatum during reward anticipation and higher activation in the right insula during reward delivery."
- baerrie 2y ago
  It says towards the end of the abstract that righting this balance, increasing anticipation dopamine and lowering reward receiving dopamine, could help with adhd
- Thorrez 2y ago
  >Not any indicator of things to 'do' to help not develop ADHD later? No actions to take? Reduce early life adversity.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  > No actions to take? The actions to take would appear to depend upon whether one wishes to have fewer adults with lifetime ADHD symptoms, or more*. The childhood adversities to affect either way are from [RutterQuinton77] and listed in TFA's Table S1, abbreviated here: *Low educational level parent with neither school nor training *Overcrowding more than 1.0 person/room or housing<=50m2 Parental disorder moderate to severe DSM-III-R Parental history insitutionalised/deliquent/changes of parental figure Marital discord low partnership in 2 of {harmony,communication,warmth} *Early parenthood a parent <=18 (birth) or relationship <6 months (conc) *One-parent family (at birth) *Unwanted pregnancy an abortion was seriously considered *Poor social network lack of friends & help in child care Severe chronic probs affecting a parent for more than 1 year Poorly coping parent with stressful events of past year The ones marked with * are those factors I believe relatively easier to address via social policy. EDIT: TFA uses different measures, discussed in the section "Definition of Rutter’s indicators of adversity (RIA)": low social class both parents marital discord parents not at same address large family size 4+ children paternal criminality maternal disorder ICD-8: 290–315 or ICD-10: F00-F99 foster placement * for instance, [Huxley32] mentions the practice of inducing fetal alcohol syndrome in order to ensure a steady supply of menial labour
  - circlefavshape 2y ago
    More than 1 person per room??? Surely everyone having their own room is a very recent development?
    - jprete 2y ago
      I think that's the whole house, not just bedrooms.
      - lupire 2y ago
        That makes even less sense.
      - hiatus 2y ago
        That would imply ADHD was profoundly more widespread in the generations of our grandparents and before, since 10 or more people sharing an apartment or living space was incredibly common.
        red-iron-pine 2y ago
        entirely possible that it was, but it was less of an issue when you have to haul water 3km a day and then work in the fields. kinda like autism numbers are going up, but that might simply be because of increased diagnosis. or how "gay" isn't a new thing that's just trending -- the romans and greeks (and ottomans, and the tang dynasty, etc.) were also pretty damn gay too. all super common stuff, just not logged as much
        hiatus 2y ago
        Idk, my grandma and my family from her generation had no problem taking a plane ride without entertainment, and didn't compensate with conversation or the seat back screen.
    - lupire 2y ago
      It's a recent development among poor lower class stressed people, not among calm, comfortable successful people
- malfist 2y ago
  That's not really how research papers go. You prove a causal link between two things before a future paper tests methodologies to address the link. Though popular reporting on these types of papers will often have speculation from the journalist
  - lupire 2y ago
    Correlation, not causation. Randomized controlled trials of human suffering are not ethically approved research.
bob_theslob646 2y ago
"Moreover, a similar activation pattern related to lifetime ADHD may suggest that the impact of early life stress on ADHD may possibly be mediated by a dysfunctional reward pathway." What is a dysfunctional reward pathway?
- throw88888 2y ago
  It is stated just above the quoted text. Basically a lower-than-expected response to reward anticipation and a higher-than-expected response upon reward delivery. I.e. the typical ADHD problem of instant vs delayed gratification and how the brain responds to it. Neurotypical people’s brains seem to be better at rewarding in anticipation and not just on actual delivery. IIUC
  - gradus_ad 2y ago
    If you're thinking about 10 different things in quick succession spontaneously flipping between each without control, your brain can't deliver sustained anticipatory reward for the one thing you actually should be working towards. The brain doesn't magically "know" what is important, presence in consciousness is what determines importance and reward allocation. Normal brains are able to fixate without tremendous effort. My whole life I could barely sustain a conversation with someone because the moment they started speaking I'd reflexively begin thinking about something else. But when I tried Adderall I could actually have genuine conversations with people, hearing them and thinking about what they were saying and then responding, doing this repeatedly for many minutes. It felt like a superpower.
    - jvanderbot 2y ago
      Some of the "Flipping around" might be caused by an inability to discount the reward from the thing you're flipping to - it seems important / rewarding. It's not much different than someone refusing to work on an important thing because they can't stop thinking about this neat thing over here that feels cooler. Just to connect to the subject at hand.
vintermann 2y ago
[flagged]
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  Culturally ingrained toxic positivity?
  - Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
    Depression is rare when you have to spend most of your day walking water. Or maybe it presents differently.
- FrustratedMonky 2y ago
  "a reasonable way to feel given what you've been through" Isn't our brain made of chemicals of all kinds, and how we 'feel' is based on many chemical interactions, and so the "a reasonable way to feel given what you've been through", is the brains natural 'reasonable way to feel' as a reaction given some environment it is in. So this is just measuring that reaction. Maybe think of it more as analyzing why things are, and not as fixing an error. Like science does. Measure it.
  - airstrike 2y ago
    That's a fallacy, unless you believe the brain is not greater than the sum of its parts.
    - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
      Alternatively, the opposing view is a "fallacy" in that sense, unless you believe the brain is magical and doesn't obey the laws of physics and chemistry.
      - airstrike 2y ago
        You needn't believe in magic, only in emergent properties well within the constraints of science.
tvalentyn 2y ago
There is a fantastic book on the impact of childhood adversity on long term health outcomes. Highly recommend, especially to prospective parents: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33413909-the-deepest-well https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33413909-the-deepest-wel...
taeric 2y ago
I'm growing stronger in a belief that teaching/indoctrination matters more than just general experience. Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that life experiences are their own teaching. However, it seems clear that a coach/teacher added to the exact same experiences can lead to different learning. Curious if folks have any links to studies that disprove that?
- airstrike 2y ago
  One such life adversity can be having bad teachers and unhelpful indoctrination in early life. If anything you're corroborating TFA's argument?
  - taeric 2y ago
    Sure? That feels to be stretching the adversity definition, though. Not having a good teacher does not mean you necessarily had a bad one, after all.
- hindsightbias 2y ago
  Moved a lot when young and generally not the greatest learning experiences but low in comparison to the adversity of many peers. One teacher recognized I had a learning disability at elementary level before teachers were trained on that kind of thing. Was able to work through that over time. HS counselor nominated me for a program that involved a long weekend trip to a medium sized university city. Never understood why I alone was chosen over peers. I think it happens to a lot of kids that way, it didn't take a village, curriculum or a coordinated effort. Just one or two educators doing one thing and changing a life completely. I'm sure just one authority figure over time can have a huge impact.
bigbacaloa 2y ago
[dead]
zzsshh 2y ago
I wish scientific papers would have their conclusion at the top of the page.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Publishers wouldn't like it, I guess.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  I wish they'd have nothing but their methodologies and results.
- cbolton 2y ago
  But they do, it's basically the last part of the abstract.
SoftTalker 2y ago
I don't really see how there can be any question that chaos, poverty, moving every year, constantly changing schools, multiple and changing "parent" figures, adults making poor choices over and over, no examples of deliberate planning and saving for the future, screws up kids. They learn that life is completely unpredictable, that opportunities for reward should be taken immediately because they will not be there later, they never learn to spend extended time on learning anything or saving money for the future because they have never seen anyone in their life do those things. A few manage to figure it out anyway, but most are doomed to repeat all of that as parents with their own kids. It's sad.
- taeric 2y ago
  I mean, maybe? They experience that life is completely unpredictable, sure. They learn whatever they are taught along with it. Consider, life was far more unpredictable just a few hundred years ago. Literally stubbing your toe in the forest could go septic and then you were dead. Violently so. Bad harvests could happen with no forewarning at all.
  - airstrike 2y ago
    The fact that stubbing your toe meant death in the past doesn't mean that facing massive adversity doesn't have real negative long term impact on one's mental well being. You're equating psychological harm and learned patterns of behavior that are unresourceful with physical accidents, without explaining why we should see them as comparable. Even if they were comparable, who's to say Neanderthal younglings with badly stubbed toes didn't also have skewed reward processing as adults?
    - taeric 2y ago
      Example of stubbing toe was about how unpredictable life was. Getting a wound to go septic was basically random for a long long time. Most of the time, stubbing your toe was about the same as it is today. Annoying and nothing more. Have it go septic, though, and it likely looked like someone had been cursed to death. And note that this goes for more than just literally stubbing your toe. Snag on a bush? Bitten by animal. It would have seemed far far more random. My post is specifically in response to the one above me. It is framed with modern events and pushing that they are obviously going to seem unpredictable to people. My assertion is that they can be seen that way, sure; but don't think this is somehow a modern thing. To your point, I would expect that reward processing is influenced by these events, sure. I would also expect any indoctrination that was happening at the same time to stick. My current bias is to expect indoctrination to stick more effectively than raw experiences. And yes, this is somewhat cheating because the indoctrination is almost certainly done to compliment experiences.
Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
Lawrence Kohlberg's pyramid theory (stages of moral development) is flipped and chipped for these kids. I would additionally posit the more "potential" the youth were given the perception of having, the dramatically worse the comparative results. I can distinctly, acutely, remember sondering others' unobservable lives, long before I had any distinct sense of agency; comparing their actions against their words and little affects either had on outcomes. So few times in my life that I have feared repercussions/punishment, it raises the question if its systematic to a group or just an individual anecdote.
lambdaphagy 2y ago
Maybe I missed it but the article doesn’t appear to control for genetics. This is crucial because: 1. Dysfunctional reward processing in parents plausibly causes early life adversity in their children, and 2. Dysfunctional reward processing, like practically every other mental trait, is to some degree heritable. Without controlling for genetics it would be impossible to distinguish the effect of early life adversity from the effect of being the child of the type of parent who creates an environment of early life adversity. I think it’s plausible that shared environment plays a role, but papers that don’t even try to address genetic confounding aren’t serious.
- salmonellaeater 2y ago
  To get an idea of how serious this omission is to the validity of the conclusions, take a look at "Individual differences in executive functions are almost entirely genetic in origin" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18473654/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18473654/
Helen2322 2y ago
[flagged]

So, is this just a way to do early measurements, to determine if someone might develop ADHD later. Not any indicator of things to 'do' to help not develop ADHD later? No actions to take? " In contrast, during reward delivery, activation of the bilateral insula, right pallidum and bilateral putamen increased with EFA. There was a significant association of lifetime ADHD symptoms with lower activation in the left ventral striatum during reward anticipation and higher activation in the right insula during reward delivery."

baerrie 2y ago
It says towards the end of the abstract that righting this balance, increasing anticipation dopamine and lowering reward receiving dopamine, could help with adhd
Thorrez 2y ago
>Not any indicator of things to 'do' to help not develop ADHD later? No actions to take? Reduce early life adversity.
082349872349872 2y ago
> No actions to take? The actions to take would appear to depend upon whether one wishes to have fewer adults with lifetime ADHD symptoms, or more*. The childhood adversities to affect either way are from [RutterQuinton77] and listed in TFA's Table S1, abbreviated here: *Low educational level parent with neither school nor training *Overcrowding more than 1.0 person/room or housing<=50m2 Parental disorder moderate to severe DSM-III-R Parental history insitutionalised/deliquent/changes of parental figure Marital discord low partnership in 2 of {harmony,communication,warmth} *Early parenthood a parent <=18 (birth) or relationship <6 months (conc) *One-parent family (at birth) *Unwanted pregnancy an abortion was seriously considered *Poor social network lack of friends & help in child care Severe chronic probs affecting a parent for more than 1 year Poorly coping parent with stressful events of past year The ones marked with * are those factors I believe relatively easier to address via social policy. EDIT: TFA uses different measures, discussed in the section "Definition of Rutter’s indicators of adversity (RIA)": low social class both parents marital discord parents not at same address large family size 4+ children paternal criminality maternal disorder ICD-8: 290–315 or ICD-10: F00-F99 foster placement * for instance, [Huxley32] mentions the practice of inducing fetal alcohol syndrome in order to ensure a steady supply of menial labour
- circlefavshape 2y ago
  More than 1 person per room??? Surely everyone having their own room is a very recent development?
  - jprete 2y ago
    I think that's the whole house, not just bedrooms.
    - lupire 2y ago
      That makes even less sense.
    - hiatus 2y ago
      That would imply ADHD was profoundly more widespread in the generations of our grandparents and before, since 10 or more people sharing an apartment or living space was incredibly common.
      - red-iron-pine 2y ago
        entirely possible that it was, but it was less of an issue when you have to haul water 3km a day and then work in the fields. kinda like autism numbers are going up, but that might simply be because of increased diagnosis. or how "gay" isn't a new thing that's just trending -- the romans and greeks (and ottomans, and the tang dynasty, etc.) were also pretty damn gay too. all super common stuff, just not logged as much
        hiatus 2y ago
        Idk, my grandma and my family from her generation had no problem taking a plane ride without entertainment, and didn't compensate with conversation or the seat back screen.
  - lupire 2y ago
    It's a recent development among poor lower class stressed people, not among calm, comfortable successful people
malfist 2y ago
That's not really how research papers go. You prove a causal link between two things before a future paper tests methodologies to address the link. Though popular reporting on these types of papers will often have speculation from the journalist
- lupire 2y ago
  Correlation, not causation. Randomized controlled trials of human suffering are not ethically approved research.

bob_theslob646 2y ago

"Moreover, a similar activation pattern related to lifetime ADHD may suggest that the impact of early life stress on ADHD may possibly be mediated by a dysfunctional reward pathway." What is a dysfunctional reward pathway?

throw88888 2y ago
It is stated just above the quoted text. Basically a lower-than-expected response to reward anticipation and a higher-than-expected response upon reward delivery. I.e. the typical ADHD problem of instant vs delayed gratification and how the brain responds to it. Neurotypical people’s brains seem to be better at rewarding in anticipation and not just on actual delivery. IIUC
- gradus_ad 2y ago
  If you're thinking about 10 different things in quick succession spontaneously flipping between each without control, your brain can't deliver sustained anticipatory reward for the one thing you actually should be working towards. The brain doesn't magically "know" what is important, presence in consciousness is what determines importance and reward allocation. Normal brains are able to fixate without tremendous effort. My whole life I could barely sustain a conversation with someone because the moment they started speaking I'd reflexively begin thinking about something else. But when I tried Adderall I could actually have genuine conversations with people, hearing them and thinking about what they were saying and then responding, doing this repeatedly for many minutes. It felt like a superpower.
  - jvanderbot 2y ago
    Some of the "Flipping around" might be caused by an inability to discount the reward from the thing you're flipping to - it seems important / rewarding. It's not much different than someone refusing to work on an important thing because they can't stop thinking about this neat thing over here that feels cooler. Just to connect to the subject at hand.

vintermann 2y ago

[flagged]

InDubioProRubio 2y ago
Culturally ingrained toxic positivity?
- Jerrrrrrry 2y ago
  Depression is rare when you have to spend most of your day walking water. Or maybe it presents differently.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
"a reasonable way to feel given what you've been through" Isn't our brain made of chemicals of all kinds, and how we 'feel' is based on many chemical interactions, and so the "a reasonable way to feel given what you've been through", is the brains natural 'reasonable way to feel' as a reaction given some environment it is in. So this is just measuring that reaction. Maybe think of it more as analyzing why things are, and not as fixing an error. Like science does. Measure it.
- airstrike 2y ago
  That's a fallacy, unless you believe the brain is not greater than the sum of its parts.
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    Alternatively, the opposing view is a "fallacy" in that sense, unless you believe the brain is magical and doesn't obey the laws of physics and chemistry.
    - airstrike 2y ago
      You needn't believe in magic, only in emergent properties well within the constraints of science.

tvalentyn 2y ago

There is a fantastic book on the impact of childhood adversity on long term health outcomes. Highly recommend, especially to prospective parents: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33413909-the-deepest-well https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33413909-the-deepest-wel...

taeric 2y ago

I'm growing stronger in a belief that teaching/indoctrination matters more than just general experience. Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that life experiences are their own teaching. However, it seems clear that a coach/teacher added to the exact same experiences can lead to different learning. Curious if folks have any links to studies that disprove that?

airstrike 2y ago
One such life adversity can be having bad teachers and unhelpful indoctrination in early life. If anything you're corroborating TFA's argument?
- taeric 2y ago
  Sure? That feels to be stretching the adversity definition, though. Not having a good teacher does not mean you necessarily had a bad one, after all.
hindsightbias 2y ago
Moved a lot when young and generally not the greatest learning experiences but low in comparison to the adversity of many peers. One teacher recognized I had a learning disability at elementary level before teachers were trained on that kind of thing. Was able to work through that over time. HS counselor nominated me for a program that involved a long weekend trip to a medium sized university city. Never understood why I alone was chosen over peers. I think it happens to a lot of kids that way, it didn't take a village, curriculum or a coordinated effort. Just one or two educators doing one thing and changing a life completely. I'm sure just one authority figure over time can have a huge impact.

bigbacaloa 2y ago

[dead]

zzsshh 2y ago

I wish scientific papers would have their conclusion at the top of the page.

HPsquared 2y ago
Publishers wouldn't like it, I guess.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
I wish they'd have nothing but their methodologies and results.
cbolton 2y ago
But they do, it's basically the last part of the abstract.

SoftTalker 2y ago

I don't really see how there can be any question that chaos, poverty, moving every year, constantly changing schools, multiple and changing "parent" figures, adults making poor choices over and over, no examples of deliberate planning and saving for the future, screws up kids. They learn that life is completely unpredictable, that opportunities for reward should be taken immediately because they will not be there later, they never learn to spend extended time on learning anything or saving money for the future because they have never seen anyone in their life do those things. A few manage to figure it out anyway, but most are doomed to repeat all of that as parents with their own kids. It's sad.

taeric 2y ago
I mean, maybe? They experience that life is completely unpredictable, sure. They learn whatever they are taught along with it. Consider, life was far more unpredictable just a few hundred years ago. Literally stubbing your toe in the forest could go septic and then you were dead. Violently so. Bad harvests could happen with no forewarning at all.
- airstrike 2y ago
  The fact that stubbing your toe meant death in the past doesn't mean that facing massive adversity doesn't have real negative long term impact on one's mental well being. You're equating psychological harm and learned patterns of behavior that are unresourceful with physical accidents, without explaining why we should see them as comparable. Even if they were comparable, who's to say Neanderthal younglings with badly stubbed toes didn't also have skewed reward processing as adults?
  - taeric 2y ago
    Example of stubbing toe was about how unpredictable life was. Getting a wound to go septic was basically random for a long long time. Most of the time, stubbing your toe was about the same as it is today. Annoying and nothing more. Have it go septic, though, and it likely looked like someone had been cursed to death. And note that this goes for more than just literally stubbing your toe. Snag on a bush? Bitten by animal. It would have seemed far far more random. My post is specifically in response to the one above me. It is framed with modern events and pushing that they are obviously going to seem unpredictable to people. My assertion is that they can be seen that way, sure; but don't think this is somehow a modern thing. To your point, I would expect that reward processing is influenced by these events, sure. I would also expect any indoctrination that was happening at the same time to stick. My current bias is to expect indoctrination to stick more effectively than raw experiences. And yes, this is somewhat cheating because the indoctrination is almost certainly done to compliment experiences.

Jerrrrrrry 2y ago

Lawrence Kohlberg's pyramid theory (stages of moral development) is flipped and chipped for these kids. I would additionally posit the more "potential" the youth were given the perception of having, the dramatically worse the comparative results. I can distinctly, acutely, remember sondering others' unobservable lives, long before I had any distinct sense of agency; comparing their actions against their words and little affects either had on outcomes. So few times in my life that I have feared repercussions/punishment, it raises the question if its systematic to a group or just an individual anecdote.

lambdaphagy 2y ago

Maybe I missed it but the article doesn’t appear to control for genetics. This is crucial because: 1. Dysfunctional reward processing in parents plausibly causes early life adversity in their children, and 2. Dysfunctional reward processing, like practically every other mental trait, is to some degree heritable. Without controlling for genetics it would be impossible to distinguish the effect of early life adversity from the effect of being the child of the type of parent who creates an environment of early life adversity. I think it’s plausible that shared environment plays a role, but papers that don’t even try to address genetic confounding aren’t serious.

salmonellaeater 2y ago
To get an idea of how serious this omission is to the validity of the conclusions, take a look at "Individual differences in executive functions are almost entirely genetic in origin" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18473654/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18473654/

Helen2322 2y ago

[flagged]