{"id":13795,"date":"2017-12-05T09:37:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T09:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=13795"},"modified":"2017-12-05T09:37:28","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T09:37:28","slug":"gambling-odds-lifes-risks-common-childhood-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/gambling-odds-lifes-risks-common-childhood-stress\/","title":{"rendered":"Gambling against the odds on life\u2019s risks more common after childhood stress"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Rasmus Birn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Adults who lived high-stress childhoods have trouble reading the signs that a loss or punishment is looming, leaving themselves in situations that risk avoidable health and financial problems and legal trouble.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to researchers at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison, this difficulty may be biological, stemming from an unhelpful lack of activity in the brain when a situation should be prompting heightened awareness. And that discovery may help train at-risk young people to be better at avoiding risk.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that people are overtly deciding to take these negative risks, or do things that might get them in trouble,\u201d says\u00a0Seth Pollak<\/a>, a UW\u2013Madison psychology professor who has studied kids and stress for decades. \u201cIt may very well be that their brains are not really processing the information that should tell them they are headed to a bad place, that this is not the right step to take.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Pollak and UW\u2013Madison psychiatry Professor\u00a0Rasmus Birn<\/a>\u00a0brought back to the lab more than 50 people \u2014 now ages 19 to 23 \u2014 who were participants in a study Pollak conducted about stress hormones when they were 8 years old. They were drawn equally from that study\u2019s least-stressed and most-stressed kids. Those who dealt with chronic high stress as children experienced traumatic events like parents killed by gunfire or substance abuse, multiple foster home placements and severe maltreatment, according to Pollak.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers put the adults through a series of tasks \u2014 while in and out of brain-scanning functional magnetic resonance imagers (fMRI) \u2014 designed to stimulate the brain regions that weigh gain and loss, risk and reward.<\/span><\/p>\n

The high childhood stress group was less attentive to potential loss than the low childhood stress group, and more piqued by resulting losses. The results were published today (Dec. 4, 2017) in the journal\u00a0Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the most striking outcomes, Birn says, was watching the high-stress group work through a gambling scenario in which a token is hidden behind one of 10 squares. Some of the squares are colored red, others blue. The object is to choose the color of the square covering the token.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMost people, if you see nine red squares, one blue square \u2014 and the token is randomly placed \u2014 you\u2019re going to guess red,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd yet, in a lot of these individuals who experienced high childhood stress we saw, they\u2019re betting on the one instead of the nine. And they\u2019re betting against the odds again and again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And they spent a longer time doing it, according to Pollak, agonizing over the decision before making a poor decision again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Seth
Seth Pollak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was our observation not that they couldn\u2019t do math, but that they weren\u2019t really attending to the right things,\u201d he says. \u201cWe didn\u2019t see people improving over time. You might say, \u2018Well, they don\u2019t get how it works.\u2019 But the people with high-stress childhoods, even after many trials, they weren\u2019t using negative feedback to change their behavior and improve.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In brain scans from the people who lived with high stress as children, Birn and Pollak could see a surprisingly low amount of activity in the brain region expected to light up when confronted by a potential loss.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then, when they would lose, we\u2019d see more activity than expected \u2014 an overreaction \u2014 in the part of the brain that responds to reward,\u201d Pollak says, \u201cwhich makes sense. If you didn\u2019t catch the cue that you were likely to lose, you\u2019re probably going to be pretty shocked when you don\u2019t win.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The high-stress childhood group also reported undertaking more risky behaviors \u2014 smoking, not wearing a seatbelt in a car or texting while driving \u2014 on a regular basis than their low-stress counterparts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Interestingly, it was just the childhood stress level \u2014 not the level of stress in the participants\u2019 adult lives \u2014 that was predictive of their ability to identify potential loss or avoid risky behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers\u2019 knowledge of their subjects\u2019 childhood stress is unique. Typically, assessing the childhood of a group of adults requires relying on their recollections and spotty records.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut we knew these people when they were kids,\u201d says Pollak. \u201cWe have a clinical assessment of their stress levels in childhood that was done at that time of their lives, while their parents sat in the waiting room. That\u2019s powerful data.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The results are powerful, too, and have already drawn interest from child welfare authorities and family court judges often in the position of trying to change behavior by threatening or applying punishment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo many of our behavioral interventions are predicated on the idea that people will understand there\u2019s a sign they\u2019re about to be punished,\u201d Pollak says. \u201cMaybe we need to rethink some of those things.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And maybe people can be taught to spot potential loss and risk. Understanding the brain mechanisms that contribute to repeated poor judgment could illuminate ways to prevent it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are they paying attention to? What associations from past experience are they able to remember and connect? Can we help them make better observations and predictions?\u201d Pollak says. \u201cFraming behavioral problems as a learning problem opens up new doors of what we can do to help people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Next, the researchers plan to expand the scope of their brain scans and analyses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow that we have this finding, we can use it to guide us to look at specific networks in the brain that are active and functionally connected,\u201d Birn says. \u201cWe may find that childhood stress reshapes the way communication happens across the brain.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adults who lived high-stress childhoods have trouble reading the signs that a loss or punishment is looming, leaving themselves in situations that risk avoidable health and financial problems and legal trouble. According to researchers at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison, this difficulty may be biological, stemming from an unhelpful lack of activity in the brain when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",736,495,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo-300x202.jpg",300,202,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",736,495,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",736,495,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",736,495,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",736,495,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",736,495,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",736,495,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",600,404,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",600,404,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",729,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",535,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",95,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",640,430,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",96,65,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/UW-Madision-logo.jpg",150,101,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Psychology<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}