Stress inoculation may improve resilience later in life

This reference is used to annotate "I would never send my kids to school" (2017) by Piotr Wozniak

Not all forms of stress in childhood are bad. Context, magnitude, age, and the circadian phase may all affect the outcome. Here is an example report:

Within the limits of current animal models, researches on rodents and primates support the stress inoculation hypothesis and provide insight into its neurobiological mechanisms. Broadly, early life stress inoculation triggers broad developmental cascades that increase adaptation. For example, studies on male and female squirrel monkeys show that a brief intermittent maternal separation during early childhood enhances long-lasting and trait-like transformation in the multiple domains of adaptive functioning [24]. Young male and female monkeys presented with a moderate stressor in the form of periodic short maternal separation from postnatal week 17 to postnatal week 27 experienced acute distress during the separation periods manifested by agitation and temporary elevation in the stress hormone levels [25]. However later in life, at nine months of age, the same set of monkeys demonstrated lower anxiety and decreased stress hormone levels when compared to the control animals. Further these inoculated monkeys showed higher cognitive control when accessed at 1.5 years of age, higher curiosity when accessed at 2.5 years, and larger prefrontal cortex volume at 3.3 years of age, compared to the age matched noninoculated controls [25, 26]. These results suggest that engagement in new situations that require challenging but not overwhelmingly stressful experiences results in enduring effects that stimulate adaptation in cognitive, motivational, and socioemotional aspect of behavior in primates

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Quoted excerpts come from the following reference:

Title: Seeding Stress Resilience through Inoculation

Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736400/

Backlink: Stress resilience