Discuss The Effects Of Negative Parenting On Brain Development

A major concern in the world today is the brain development of adolescents who have abusive parents. Many studies have gone into the research of adolescent’s brain development during these challenging times. However, there has not been a considerable amount of research when talking about non-abusive parenting behavior on brain structure in adolescents. Environmental influences during this period of an adolescents’ life impact the way that the brain develops over time. In the article, Observed Measures of Negative Parenting Predict Brain Development during Adolescence, they aim their study to investigate the association between aggressive and positive parenting behaviors on brain development from early to late adolescence.

The environment that children are surrounded by could play a major key on the development of psychopathology later in life. In this study, researchers state that negative, harsh or punitive parenting and lower levels of positive will ultimately cause child emotional and behavioral problems that continue into adolescence and adulthood. In addition, this study will examine the effects of negative and positive

parenting during early adolescence on structural brain development across the entire adolescent period using a multi-wave longitudinal design. To examine the brain, the researchers will evaluate the right superior frontal gyrus and lateral parietal cortex, including the supramarginal gyrus which is included in the executive functions, particularly related to attention and response inhibition.

In the beginning of this study, researchers first examined brain development across the entire adolescent period, from age 11 to 20.

Second, they investigated the effects of parenting behaviors on brain development using a whole-brain vertex-wise approach. The researchers then investigated how brain changes associated with parenting were in turn related to adolescent functioning. The researchers came up with a hypothesis that lower frequency of aggressive maternal behavior, and a higher frequency of positive maternal behavior, would predict an exaggeration of the normal pattern of growth of cortical thickness, particularly in the prefrontal regions. Another hypothesis they came up with was that the neurodevelopmental patterns associated with parenting will, in turn, be associated with behavioral functioning during late

adolescence.

The sample for this study was resulting from a larger Australian longitudinal cohort. 245 adolescents participated in this research to take part in brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging assessment at three time points when they were 12, 16 and 19. The adolescents were assessed for Axis 1 disorders at each of these time points using the Schedule for Affective Disorder and Schizophrenia for School-Aged Children. Due to some exclusions, there were only 166 participants (n =86 males) aged 11 to 20 available for analysis. At the end of the research, it showed that males cortical thickness in the superior frontal gyrus, superior parietal lobe and supramarginal gyrus developed in a quadratic pattern over adolescence, with thickening from early to mid-adolescence, and flattening or thinning from mid to late adolescence. Ultimately resulting that those males with mothers who displayed a higher frequency of aggressive behavior during early adolescence, had an exaggerated increase in cortical thickness in the superior frontal gyrus, superior parietal lobe and supramarginal gyrus from early to late adolescence, compared to those males with mothers who displayed relatively less aggressive behavior.