어른이 되었을 때의 사회생활과 어릴 때 스트레스의 관계

When baboons experience trauma in early life, they have higher levels of stress hormones in adulthood—a potential marker of poor health—than their peers who don't experience trauma, even if they have strong social relationships as adults, according to a study led by a University of Michigan researcher.

The study examined the links between childhood adversity, adult social relationships and glucocorticoid concentrations. The goal was to determine whether one of the reasons that baboons who experience early trauma live shorter, less healthy lives was because they fail to develop strong social relationships in adulthood, which could be beneficial to health.

authors found that while early life adversity didn't strongly affect baboons' ability to have social relationships, any positive effect of those relationships was much smaller than the large negative effects of early life trauma.

"For lots of people, there are very strong connections between what happens in their early lives and what happens in their adult lives," "But one of the interesting things about this is, it doesn't just occur in humans. It occurs in everything from fish to insects to amphibians, and certainly other primates."

The researchers used glucocorticoid concentrations, collected from the feces of baboons throughout their adult lives, as a measure of health because other measurements, such as taking temperatures or collecting blood, are difficult with wild animals. Researchers on the project also collect data on baboons' social relationships: who's friends with whom and how much time they spend grooming each other.

The direct impact of early adversity on adult glucocorticoid concentrations was 11 times stronger than the impact of social bonds on glucocorticoids. The animals who experienced trauma had slightly weaker social bonds than the animals who didn't, but being only slightly less social, combined with social bonds having only a small effect on glucocorticoids, meant that social relationships did not explain why these animals have higher stress hormone concentrations.

"One of the big question marks here is that we do not want to conflate stress hormones and health. Stress hormone levels are just one measure, and specifically

 

어릴 때 가뭄, 엄마의 낮은 서열로 인한 차별, 형제의 존재로 인하여 사랑을 받기 힘든 상황 속에 있었던 baboon들은 어른 되었을 때 스트레스 호르몬이 높다고 한다. 스트레스 호르몬 단 하나만의 수치로 건강이 좋고 나쁘고 여부를 판단할 수는 없지만, 어릴 때 트라우마를 겪은 baboon들은 단명하는 경우가 많았다고 한다. 

그리고 트라우마를 겪었더라도 사회생활을 잘하면 되지 않을까 싶었지만, 트라우마로 인한 영향에서는 벗어날 수 없었다고 한다.  

 

reference

Stacy Rosenbaum el al., "Social bonds do not mediate the relationship between early adversity and adult glucocorticoids in wild baboons," PNAS (2020). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004524117