When kids go through tough times like neglect or abuse, it can cause a lot of stress. This stress can change how their brains grow and work.
These changes can lead to mental health problems like depression and schizophrenia. Until now, scientists were not sure how this happens or how to stop it.
On August 1, a research team from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), led by Professor Won-Suk Chung, made a big discovery.
They found that when kids are stressed, some cells in their brain called astrocytes start to remove too many connections between nerve cells.
This can lead to mental health problems. The team’s findings were published in a scientific paper in the Immunity journal.
The Mechanism: What Exactly Happens in the Brain?
Usually, astrocytes help keep the brain healthy by getting rid of things the brain doesn’t need.
But when there’s too much stress, these cells start to remove too many connections between nerve cells. This can mess up how the brain works and lead to mental health problems.
When we’re stressed, our bodies make stress hormones. These hormones can do a lot of things, like helping us deal with inflammation or use up carbohydrates.
But if we’re stressed for a long time, we make too many stress hormones. This can lead to problems like depression, difficulties with thinking, and anxiety.
The research team found out that stress hormones make astrocytes remove too many connections between nerve cells.
They did this by using lab mice that were not allowed to socialize early in their lives, which caused a lot of stress. They found that the stress hormones attached to parts of the astrocytes called glucocorticoid receptors.
This caused the astrocytes to make too much of something called Mer tyrosine kinase, which helps astrocytes get rid of things.
What Gets Affected in the Brain?
The team was surprised to find out that the astrocytes only got rid of certain types of connections in the brain.
This led to abnormal connections between nerve cells, which can cause problems with social skills and depression when the mice got older.
They also found that another type of cell in the brain, called microglia, didn’t get rid of any connections. This means that only astrocytes react to stress hormones in this way.
How Does This Apply to Humans?
To see if the same thing happens in humans, the team used human brain cells grown in the lab. They found that stress hormones also caused human astrocytes to get rid of too many connections.
This suggests that the same thing might happen in people with mental health problems.
Professor Chung said, “We didn’t know exactly how childhood stress caused brain diseases until now. This research shows that astrocytes removing too many connections could be an important cause.”
He thinks that in the future, treatments for brain diseases could target astrocytes’ response to stress.
If you care about health, please read studies that cats may help decrease anxiety for kids with autism and new study may develop better treatment for autism
For more information about health, please see recent studies about how to eat your way to a healthy brain, and results showing this type of food may contribute to autism.
The study was published in Immunity,
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