just three hours a day for ten days, created specific and tangible changes in their DNA leading to an inability to deal with stressful situations in adulthood and, what’s more, poorer memories. The researcher, Dr Christopher Murgatroyd from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, describes how the high levels of stress hormones produced by the baby mice ‘tweaked’ the DNA of a gene that codes for a vasopressin, a stress hormone.
‘This leaves a permanent mark at the vasopressin gene,’ said Dr Murgatroyd. ‘It is then programmed to produce high levels [of the hormone] later on in life.’
The BBC article also quotes Professor Hans Reul, a neuroscientist at Bristol University, as saying that ‘There is strong evidence that adversities such as abuse and neglect during infancy contribute to the development of psychiatric diseases such as depression.’ This is something backed up by
New Scientist
in April 2009:
Maternal rejection or trauma early in life, for example, may affect a person’s emotional reactions to stressful events later on, potentially predisposing them to depression and anxiety disorders.
( www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227022.800-the-five-ages-of-the-brain-childhood.html )
So, the more stressed your life as a child – and remember with these mice it wasn’t overly harsh abuse or neglect, it can simply be the stress caused by having a non-demonstrative mother in early childhood – the more susceptible to stress you are in adulthood
at a genetic level
. And, according to the World Health Organization, depression is currently the leading cause of disability in the world, is fourth in the world in terms of productive days lost and lives shortened by it and is heading to the number two slot by 2020. 6 For people aged 15 to 44 it is already there.
Who we are is a complex series of interactions between what we were born with and what we were born into, none of which is written in stone. If to be poor and stupid is your fate then what is the point of school? I am often asked by teachers if there really is anything they can do to help children who have already suffered at the hands of the people and life they were born into and, even before I came across this research, I felt I had to say yes, absolutely, or else what’s the point! What the latest research findings are showing teachers everywhere is that yes there is a point, you don’t just make a difference; you make everything different. Because, as Ian Robertson points out:
Schooling and education, without doubt, physically change the brains of children.
(Robertson 1999)
Chapter 11
Talk to the hand coz the nucleus accumbens ain’t listening
How often have you said the words ‘Grow up!’ to a child? Or, ‘You’re acting childish!’, or ‘Act your age!’? Yet what the neuroscience is showing us is that to say ‘grow up’ to a child is like saying ‘be thin’ to a fat person or ‘speak English’ to a badger.
In the words of the great Swiss researcher into children’s development, Jean Piaget:
Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society … but for me and no one else, education means making creators. … You have to make inventors, innovators— not conformists.
(Bringuier 1980)
Remember these words – adolescents are not people.
I mentioned in chapter 10 that one of the few accurate aspects of neuroscience that seems to have percolated out of the ivory neurological towers is the idea that we ‘grow’ our brains, that brains learn through making and strengthening connections between brain cells. The making of connections contributes to what is called ‘grey matter’ in the brain. The strengthening is a process called myelination, myelin being a fatty substance that acts as an insulating sheath around the connections and helps make the passage of electrical impulses down these connections more effective. As this builds up in the growing brain, it is
‘This leaves a permanent mark at the vasopressin gene,’ said Dr Murgatroyd. ‘It is then programmed to produce high levels [of the hormone] later on in life.’
The BBC article also quotes Professor Hans Reul, a neuroscientist at Bristol University, as saying that ‘There is strong evidence that adversities such as abuse and neglect during infancy contribute to the development of psychiatric diseases such as depression.’ This is something backed up by
New Scientist
in April 2009:
Maternal rejection or trauma early in life, for example, may affect a person’s emotional reactions to stressful events later on, potentially predisposing them to depression and anxiety disorders.
( www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227022.800-the-five-ages-of-the-brain-childhood.html )
So, the more stressed your life as a child – and remember with these mice it wasn’t overly harsh abuse or neglect, it can simply be the stress caused by having a non-demonstrative mother in early childhood – the more susceptible to stress you are in adulthood
at a genetic level
. And, according to the World Health Organization, depression is currently the leading cause of disability in the world, is fourth in the world in terms of productive days lost and lives shortened by it and is heading to the number two slot by 2020. 6 For people aged 15 to 44 it is already there.
Who we are is a complex series of interactions between what we were born with and what we were born into, none of which is written in stone. If to be poor and stupid is your fate then what is the point of school? I am often asked by teachers if there really is anything they can do to help children who have already suffered at the hands of the people and life they were born into and, even before I came across this research, I felt I had to say yes, absolutely, or else what’s the point! What the latest research findings are showing teachers everywhere is that yes there is a point, you don’t just make a difference; you make everything different. Because, as Ian Robertson points out:
Schooling and education, without doubt, physically change the brains of children.
(Robertson 1999)
Chapter 11
Talk to the hand coz the nucleus accumbens ain’t listening
How often have you said the words ‘Grow up!’ to a child? Or, ‘You’re acting childish!’, or ‘Act your age!’? Yet what the neuroscience is showing us is that to say ‘grow up’ to a child is like saying ‘be thin’ to a fat person or ‘speak English’ to a badger.
In the words of the great Swiss researcher into children’s development, Jean Piaget:
Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society … but for me and no one else, education means making creators. … You have to make inventors, innovators— not conformists.
(Bringuier 1980)
Remember these words – adolescents are not people.
I mentioned in chapter 10 that one of the few accurate aspects of neuroscience that seems to have percolated out of the ivory neurological towers is the idea that we ‘grow’ our brains, that brains learn through making and strengthening connections between brain cells. The making of connections contributes to what is called ‘grey matter’ in the brain. The strengthening is a process called myelination, myelin being a fatty substance that acts as an insulating sheath around the connections and helps make the passage of electrical impulses down these connections more effective. As this builds up in the growing brain, it is
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