What impact does stress have on the growing brain?
In: Biology
When you’re growing, the brain is full of possibilities. It’s still making connections between different parts of the brain, strengthening (making faster) the connections that are used the most, and pruning away the ones that aren’t used and thus likely not necessary.
The brain is constantly trying to learn and adapt to its environment. If you’re exposed to lots of stress when you’re young, your brain will strengthen its connections that help it respond to that stress and weaken the ones that are less useful/used.
For example, if you’re raised by physically abusive parents, your brain will wire itself to quickly recognize angry faces, or even to err on the side of assuming neutral faces are angry. This is good in the abusive environment because it can help you stay safer: if you can tell dad is angry, then you’ll know to tiptoe around him and maybe avoid getting hurt. Other changes could be to have a low threshold for feeling fear or anxiety – again, things that help keep you safe in that stressful environment if they make you more cautious.
As you get older, your brain gets more set in its ways, and there’s less and less remodeling of its connections. That means that the stress responses wired when you’re young can be stuck there when you’re older.
If you change environments, that may mean that what was once helpful under stress – like thinking everyone is mad at you or feeling anxious all the time – is no longer helpful in a non-stressful environment. Instead, you may find it hard to make friends because you think people are mad at you when they’re not, or you could be anxious all the time when you’re actually safe, which can be hard on the body and the mind.
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