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Poor Maternal Care Influences Response to Psychological Stress in Adults

Enhanced dopamine release during a stressful task is yet another neurobiologic difference in individuals reporting poor maternal care in early life.

Early-life stress (child abuse, early parental loss, or neglect) has been associated with long-lasting biologic consequences that render individuals more likely to develop mood and anxiety disorders in adulthood. In this study, 120 healthy young college students rated their parental care in early life on a quantitative scale. Five students who reported high levels of maternal care and five students who reported low levels of maternal care underwent PET scanning to assess dopamine release during a stressful mental arithmetic task. Investigators increased stress levels by manipulating the test's difficulty so that subjects scored much worse than they expected and, for about 2 minutes after each 6-minute session, by exhorting the subjects to improve their performance. Cortisol saliva concentrations were measured to determine hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis activation. Low-maternal-care subjects had significantly higher anxiety and lower self-esteem than high-maternal-care subjects.

Cortisol response in both groups was greater in the stress condition than in an at-rest control condition; the response was significantly greater in the low-maternal-care group than in the high-maternal-care group. The low-maternal-care group also had significantly increased extracellular dopamine levels in the bilateral ventral striatum (measured indirectly by reductions in [¹¹C]raclopride binding potential). In the stress condition, there was a highly significant correlation in both groups between the magnitude of the cortisol response and the increased dopamine levels.

Comment: These data add enhanced dopamine release to the growing list of persistent neurobiologic changes in individuals with untoward early-life experiences; other recent findings include long-term alterations in the corticotropin-releasing factor system and the HPA axis. The therapeutic implications of these findings should be explored.

— Charles Nemeroff, MD, PhD

Published in Journal Watch Psychiatry April 22, 2004

Citation(s):

Pruessner JC et al. Dopamine release in response to a psychological stress in humans and its relationship to early life maternal care: A positron emission tomography study using [¹¹C]raclopride. J Neurosci 2004 Mar 17; 24:2825-31.

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