How Bullying May Brains puberty form

In recent years, an ever increasing amount of data has shown that peer victimization – the clinical term for bullying – impact of hundreds of millions of children and adolescents, with sometimes years and perhaps decades effects. The problem is recognized as a global health challenge posed by the World Health Organization and the United Nations. Yet still the researchers there are still a limited understanding of how behavior can shape the developing brain and physical development. Bullying is defined as behavior and deliberately usually verbal, physical and anti-social that seeks to intimidate, harm or marginalize anyone perceived as smaller, weaker or less. Among younger children, common forms of bullying include foul language, and physical damage. This behavior can thinner with age grows as a teenager bullied regularly excludes insults and ridicule their goals. Sometimes this behavior is deteriorating as “bullying” among groups of thugs at school, at work or cyberspace. The researchers believe that more than 3.2 million American students every year the experience of bullying. It is about 1 percent of the country’s total population. Among these students, about 10 to 15 percent “chronic” or persistent bullying experience, you will have more than six consecutive months. The experience of peer victimization chronically underperforming schools, increasing unemployment, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Most of the research on the neurobiological processes that could contribute to these adverse health outcomes occurred mostly in the last decade has focused on the effects of bullying on the response to the body’s stress system. An article published last December in the journal Molecular Psychiatry highlights another area: the architecture of the brain. It can cause chronic trauma of bullying the structure of the brain magnetic resonance longitudinal data influence (MRI) by an international team at King’s College London based collections. The ECHO results put the previous research that similar changes in children and adults with experience show that what is known as “abuse” – neglect or abuse by caregivers for adults. long-term changes in brain structure and chemistry are an indicator “left-bullying,” says Tracy Vaillancourt, a clinical psychologist at the University of Ottawa. Along with others in the field she is sure that studies such as those of King College will be a catalyst for further research that could ultimately be used to inform policy decisions and support anti-bullying interventions. The Kings College researchers used a set of data that contain clinical genetics, and data collected from 682 young people from France, Germany neuroimaging, Ireland and the United Kingdom as part of a European research project known as IMAGEN study – a less than the first longitudinal study to explore the development of brain and mental health. In long-term studies they will be collected over several years. This allows researchers to follow the children over time and determine whether certain experiences – such as being bullied – are associated with structural changes in the brain. Young completed questionnaires at the age of 14, 16 and 19 on the scale of daily life in their bullying. MRI scans acquired at the age of 14 and 19. The researchers identified nine regions (left and right) of interest associated with stress and ill-treatment. The analysis of changes in brain volume, at the age of 19, found that participants who experienced chronic bullying had involved much steeper declines in the volume of two moving regions and learning – leaving the left putamen and nucleus caudate – shows with former stronger effect, These participants also experienced high levels of generalized anxiety. “Part of the relationship between victimization and generalized anxiety At least on this steepest drop in the volume,” Erin Burke Quinlan, a neuroscientist at King’s College London and lead author of the study, says. She says, “implies – similar to the ill-treatment literature -., Which areas of the brain are almost too small to get” A previous study in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2010 reported abnormalities in certain brain regions related colleagues published that reported abuse although the study was not longitudinal and involved participants aged 18 and older. Although their work shows changes over time, Quinlan notes that “the brain plastic throughout our life. This is how we continue to learn, which is how the plasma environment on our behavior.” So you can not tell if the reduced volume indicated on MRI it is a permanent or temporary condition. The research on the neurobiology of peer victimization is about 15 years behind similar research on child abuse, says Vaillancourt, a Canada Research Chair in Children’s Mental Health and Violence Prevention at the University of Ottawa. “Suffice it to say, the abused children were sad,” was not enough “money for research and targeted, he said. This change did not occur until the experts before Congress testified and showed brain scans of children had been treated badly. Vaillancourt believes that scans provided convincing evidence that children are affected measurably by abuse and neglect. the study of chronic bullying, he suggests, could follow a similar path. Quinlan team was able to determine the location, which biological mechanism brain volume change of young people in their study. Vaillancourt and other researchers suggest that the results from the literature child abuse could provide a possible explanation. in these trials, “toxic” stress and cortisol, the stress hormone It looks old brain development. the response to the stress of the body is determined by the hypothalamus-hypo- physis-adrenal adjusted. D ie hypothalamus – large region of almonds near the base of the brain – it helps vital sensory data to adjust, such as metabolism, sleep, temperature, hunger, thirst and emotions. The hypothalamus is activated by the amygdala – an important region for processing of emotions – when danger is detected. After their initial release of adrenaline when it is perceived continued danger, left adrenal cortisol into the bloodstream. Higher levels of cortisol, the body can operate at a higher power, when exposed to an acute stressor. But chronic stress – as persistently bullying expert – could be just the opposite effect, such as memory, cognition, sleep, appetite, and other functions are constantly allowed to “alarm” and not to repair. cortisol receptors are present in most of the cells throughout the body. could be chronic stress bullying experience toxic damage to receptor sites and cause the death of nerve cells, some researchers believe, and therefore many downstream negative results, such as the lower school performance and depression. always find in the literature and mistreated victim of bullying youth generally have low cortisol, says Vaillancourt. “This is very important because we know that aspect of the blunt cortisol signing with other psychiatric problems associated with extreme trauma [as] disorder, post-traumatic stress, people who return from combat or who were repeatedly raped, or while in the fields of concentration ‘s “Holocaust, he says. Longitudinal data from Quinlan of the team is “fascinating,” says Andrea J. Romero, a social psychologist at the University of Arizona, which explores the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, culture and psychology. It “does not seem far-fetched, and it makes sense because during adolescence is a time of fundamental growth.” It ‘s interesting, adds Romero, “think about the direct physiological pathways of social experience, the impact on mental health.” Romero also the data on peer victimization has collected, including a study of the rise in rates of bullying, depression and thoughts of suicide among Latina adolescents. The psychologist echoes Vaillancourt believes that imaging techniques could have a strong influence on government policies and measures to address bullying. But it is also necessary additional qualitative research, he says. For example, this could take the form of a daily diary in which young people as early as the fourth or fifth grade document their bullying experiences. The results “could be very clearly, based on intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and gender expression,” says Romero. One of the team results Quinlan interessantesten were Vaillancourt integrates the brain regions that experienced the steepest decline in volume. “The regions that correlate with peer victimization has not seemed obvious to me,” he says. “They’re looking for things, motor control are historically linked, so that through this kind or was surprised,” added Vaillancourt. Vaillancourt says his that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) “or others in research on social pain region involved,” was an obvious choice. The ACC is one of the regions of the brain that processes physical pain. The same neural circuitry is activated when someone experiences the “social pain” of events such as pain, rejection, exclusion, humiliation and bullying, according to a number of studies in recent decades. The participants are largely IMAGEN European, Western Europe and the middle class, says Quinlan. Researchers are interested in adding their socio-economic and ethnic diversity of the sample. The team is now working to share with researchers in China, India and the United States and imaging techniques of genetic data by teenagers and young adults. The next research steps Quinlan says, researchers will be 22 at the age of the last phase to evaluate the data collected a significant amount of brain image data, in addition to genetic and epigenetic data. By the end of this year, the team is also planning the fourth follow-up for children between the ages of 25 and 26. “What we theorize was that if I image the brain in adulthood, says the age of 25, who, perhaps, through this process then continued to follow. So, when they grow up, these [brain] regions would be much smaller, “says Quinlan. “But it was still a limitation that only the data of the brain, but we hope in the next two or three years.” Rod McCullom is a Chicago writer. His works have been published in other publications Undark, ABC News, The Atlantic, The Nation, Scientific American, and the nature. This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.
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