Impact of Drugs and Alcohol on the Brain Through the Life Cycle: Knowledge for Social Workers
Richard T. Spence, Diana M. DiNitto, Shulamith Lala Ashenberg Straussner in Neurobiology of Addictions, 2014
The key to understanding these long-term consequences of prenatal AOD exposure on children is that the disruption occurs at critical periods during early development. A critical period is a time of development when several systems interact causing changes in their maturation or growth patterns. These interacting systems, in turn, will affect other systems. In particular, cocaine, cigarette smoking, or alcohol exposure arrests the maturation of a select group of neuronal systems (e.g., monoaminergic and cholinergic). The problem becomes compounded since these neurons have direct trophic effects on their target cells which are likewise either arrested or stimulated, and so on down the line. Cocaine, given prenatally but not postnatally in rats, arrests the growth of monoaminergic fibers, especially serotonin (Akbari & Azmitia, 1992). The number of serotonergic fibers in the cortex of cocaine-exposed fetuses is significantly reduced at birth. The reduced growth of serotonergic fibers can, in turn, slow down the maturation of the neurons and glial cells in the developing cortex at critical periods. Nicotine, the active drug in cigarettes, reduces cholinergic development in rats exposed prenatally (Zahalka et al., 1992) and leads to a reduction in the thickness of the cortex (Roy & Sabherwal, 1994). The effects of nicotine in animals are strongly dependent on when the drug is administered (Aramakis, Hsieh, Leslie, & Metherate, 2000).
Structural Sex Differences in the Mammalian Brain: Reconsidering the Male/Female Dichotomy
Akira Matsumoto in Sexual Differentiation of the Brain, 2017
Importantly, these two processes have separate critical periods of sensitivity to organizational steroid influences. After 14 weeks, steroid exposure fails to defeminize the urethral folds, yet continues to lengthen and enlarge (masculinize) the clitoris effectively, leaving a child with female labia minora and a penislike phallus. Case studies of babies born with ambiguous genitalia and their clinical treatment are discussed at length by Money.22 A similar independent timing of critical periods appears to exist for the brain. Rather than being entirely masculinized or not, it appears that the complexly interconnected and modular brain is capable of being functionally and structurally masculinized in one or more areas while retaining female-typical structure and function elsewhere.
Age and lifecourse transitions in health
Kevin McCracken, David R. Phillips in Global Health, 2017
The WHO cites two main mechanisms. The critical periods model occurs when a certain exposure, acting during a specific period, has lasting or lifelong effects (on the structure or function of organs, tissues and body systems) that are not substantially modified by later experiences. This implies biological programming, or a latency model, the basis of hypotheses on the foetal origins of adult diseases. The accumulation of risk model suggests that factors that increase disease risk – or, conversely, promote good health – may accumulate gradually over the lifecourse. There may be developmental periods when their effects have greater impact on later health than those operating at other times. This complements the idea of cumulative damage to biological systems as the intensity, number and/or duration of exposures increase.
History of “Serve and Return” and a Synthesis of the Literature on Its Impacts on Children’s Health and Development
Published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 2023
Jelena Komanchuk, Nicole Letourneau, Linda Duffett-Leger, Judy L. Cameron
Critical periods refer to developmental windows of plasticity when neural circuits are particularly sensitive to experience. Critical periods are characterized by high rates of synaptogenesis (i.e., synapse formation), synaptic plasticity (i.e., strengthening/weakening of synapses) and pruning (i.e., elimination of synapses) (Hensch, 2004; Marin, 2016). Early life stresses have the greatest impact on neural circuits during periods of plasticity. Stresses may also alter the period of plasticity by changing the excitatory/inhibitory balance within a neural circuit. Mistiming of windows of plasticity is implicated in the pathology of cognitive disorders, including autism and schizophrenia (Do et al., 2015; LeBlanc & Fagiolini, 2011; Marin, 2012).
Social context, interaction and expectation play a role in alcohol use amongst Australian and Danish women aged 50 to 70 years
Published in Health Care for Women International, 2020
Mette Grønkjær, Julie Dare, Kathrine Hoffmann Kusk, Line Traumer, Lynsey Uridge, Celia Wilkinson
Currently, most public health campaigns to reduce alcohol-related harm focus on younger people’s drinking, and thus are likely to have little relevance or salience to middle-aged or older women. Therefore, understanding how women’s drinking behaviors are influenced by the social and cultural norms dominant during particular periods in their lives will provide critical information to increase the age-appropriateness of future public health strategies to minimize alcohol-related harm in this group. Such information can be used to identify critical periods in women’s lives when interventions to minimize alcohol-related health risks may be most effective and acceptable to this population group.
Double punch to the better than nothing: physical activity participation of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder
Published in International Journal of Developmental Disabilities, 2023
Rıfat Kerem Gürkan, Funda Koçak
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are observed to be less active compared to individuals with normal development (ND) (Gehricke et al.2020). It was stated that they are active in the childhood period but adopt a more passive lifestyle with advancing age (Pan 2009). The adolescent period is accepted as a critical period in the development process (Curtin et al.2010). In the adolescent period, the stage of life extending between childhood and adulthood encompassing biological growth elements and significant social role transitions, there is a severe fall in participation rates in physical activity among individuals with ASD (Sorensen and Zarrett 2014).
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