Early childhood stress exposure, reward pathways, and adult decision making
Open accessAbstract
Individuals who have experienced chronic and high levels of stress during their childhoods are at increased risk for a wide range of behavioral problems, yet the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this association are poorly understood. We measured the life circumstances of a community sample of school-aged children and then followed these children for a decade. Those from the highest and lowest quintiles of childhood stress exposure were invited to return to our laboratory as young adults, at which time we reassessed their life circumstances, acquired fMRI data during a reward-processing task, and tested their judgment and decision making. Individuals who experienced high levels of early life stress showed lower levels of brain activation when processing cues signaling potential loss and increased responsivity when actually experiencing losses. Specifically, those with high childhood stress had reduced activation in the posterior cingulate/precuneus, middle temporal gyrus, and superior occipital cortex during the anticipation of potential rewards; reduced activation in putamen and insula during the anticipation of potential losses; and increased left inferior frontal gyrus activation when experiencing an actual loss. These patterns of brain activity were associated with both laboratory and real-world measures of individuals' risk taking in adulthood. Importantly, these effects were predicated only by childhood stress exposure and not by current levels of life stress.
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On a probabilistic reward task, reduced reinforcement learning appears in women with childhood sexual abuse and MDD, physically abused adolescents, and young adults with many early-life adversities.
“For example, women with a history of both childhood sexual abuse and MDD (Pechtel and Pizzagalli, 2013), adolescents exposed to physical abuse (Hanson et al., 2017), and young adults who had high levels of various adversities in early life (Birn et al., 2017) demonstrate decreased reinforcement learning.”
From The effects of early life stress on reward processing (2018) · cites this paper as Birn et al., 2017
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- Authors
- Birn, R. M., Roeber, B. J., & Pollak, S. D.
- Affiliations
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (US)
- Corresponding author
- Birn, Rasmus M.
- Pollak, Seth D.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-12-04
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 51
- Pages
- 13549-13554
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5754769
- OpenAlex
- W2774496090
- Cited by
- 197
- References
- 35
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 42 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 7
- FWCI
- 16.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- HHS | National Institutes of Health (MH61285, MH68858, HD03352)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
- Keywords
- early childhood stress, reward processing, loss anticipation, decision-making, risk-taking, reward pathways, posterior cingulate cortex, insula, putamen, inferior frontal gyrus, living conditions, brain development
- MeSH terms
- Child, Child Abuse, Decision Making, Female, Humans, Male, Reward, Stress, Psychological, Young Adult
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