There is a brief article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that lends support to the importance of care given in infancy. The article is open acess, available here.
From PNAS:
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Alison Wismer Fries et al. report that a lack of typical care-giving in infancy is associated with altered oxytocin (OT) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) neuropeptide systems during childhood. The researchers studied 18 children raised in foreign orphanages for an average of 16.6 months immediately after birth and then adopted by American families. The comparison control group consisted of 21 children raised by their biological parents in a typical American home environment. The children engaged in an interactive computer game for 30 min while sitting on the lap of their mother and also an unfamiliar female. Baseline and posttesting urine samples were taken to measure levels of OT and AVP. Children who had experienced early neglect had lower overall levels of AVP than did family-reared children. Also, OT levels for family-reared children increased after physical contact with their mothers, but children who experienced early neglect did not show a similar response. The data indicate that the AVP and OT pathways are affected by early social experience. These results are consistent with the view that early experience plays a critical role in the development of brain systems underlying basic aspects of human social behavior.
From news@nature.com:
Scientists stress that the longer-term effects of neglect on children and their hormones remain unclear. But the results after a few years are significant.
"We don't want to reach the conclusion that this difference is permanent," says Seth Pollak, a developmental psychopathologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who led the study. But he adds that the take-home message is that "children really need to be in families".
Pollak and his team measured the levels of two key hormones in 18 children adopted from Russian and Romanian orphanages. These resource-poor orphanages, where one adult may care for up to 40 infants, do not make it easy for newborns to form normal social attachments, says Pollak. The children left these orphanages about two or three years before the study, and have been living with adoptive parents in the United States.
The children, averaging 4.5 years in age, were asked to complete a 30-minute computer game while sitting on the laps of their adoptive mothers. The game directed children to engage with their mothers by, for example, tickling them or patting them on the head. For comparison, the researchers gave the same task to 21 Midwestern children who had been reared by their biological parents.
The researchers measured levels of oxytocin and vasopressin in urine samples before and after the game. Oxytocin has been nicknamed the trust hormone, and is known to facilitate social bonding in humans. The brain naturally produces the compound, and churns it out in certain situations, such as when being given a hug. Vasopressin has been shown to help animals recognize one another and bond.
A recent study found that people given a nasal spray containing oxytocin made them more willing to trust others with their money, which raises the possibility that maybe these kids could be helped by hormone treatment as they adjust to their new homes.
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