Camelia E. Hostinar, Ph.D. and Megan R. Gunnar, Ph.D. Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota

Abstract: The field of psychobiology has two major theories for talking about stress and health: the allostatic load model, which grew out of biological and neuroscience approaches to understanding health and disease, and the adaptive calibration model, which developed out of an explicitly evolutionary-developmental framework. Both are based on assumptions that the brain coordinates a distributed and dynamic set of neural circuits that regulate behavior and stress physiology to help the organism adapt to the demands of the environment. Both models support the notion that experiences early in life are embedded into the regulation of stress systems in ways that shape the organism’s future responses. These two paradigms differ in their emphasis on whether changes in how stress systems function are viewed as adaptive or maladaptive. The goal of this review is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each framework and to discuss some implications for future studies and for policy.

nihms626418.pdf

(HEIDEMARIE K. LAURENT,a GORDON T. HAROLD,b,c LESLIE LEVE,a KATHERINE H. SHELTON,d AND STEPHANIE H. M. VAN GOOZENd,e)

Abstract: Early identification of problems with psychosocial stress regulation is important for supporting mental and physical health. However, we currently lack knowledge about when reliable individual differences in stress-responsive physiology emerge and which aspects of maternal behavior determine the unfolding of infants’ stress responses. Knowledge of these processes is further limited by analytic approaches that do not account for multiple levels of withinand between-family effects. In a low-risk sample (n =100 dyads), we observed infant cortisol and mother/infant behavior during regular play and stress sessions longitudinally from age 1 to 3, and used a three-level model to separately examine variability in infant cortisol trajectories within sessions, across years, and across infants. Stable individual differences in hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis regulation were observed in the first 3 years of life. Infants of less sensitive and more intrusive mothers manifested stress sensitization, that is, elevated cortisol levels during and following stress exposure, a profile related to behavioral distress. These findings have important practical implications, suggesting that children at risk for long-term stress dysregulation may be identified in the earliest years of life.

laurent2016.pdf

Abstract:  Our own experiences, as well as the findings of many studies, suggest that emotionally arousing experiences can create lasting memories. This autobiographical article provides a brief summary of the author’s research investigating neurobiological systems responsible for the influence of emotional arousal on the consolidation of lasting memories. The research began with the finding that stimulant drugs enhanced memory in rats when administered shortly after training. Those findings suggested the possibility that endogenous systems activated by arousal might influence neural processes underlying memory consolidation. Subsequent findings that adrenal stress hormones activated by learning experiences enhance memory consolidation provided strong evidence supporting this hypothesis. Other findings suggest that the enhancement is induced by stress hormone activation of the amygdala. The findings also suggest that the basolateral amygdala modulates memory consolidation via its projections to brain regions involved in processing different aspects and forms of memory. This emotional-arousalactivated neurobiological system thus seems to play an important adaptive role in insuring that the strength of our memories will reflect their emotional significance.

Keywords arousal, stress, epinephrine, corticosterone, norepinephrine, amygdala.

annurev-psych-010814-014954.pdf