Long-term neurobiological and mental health effects of early regulatory problems

This event is part of a series of Psychology seminars that regularly occurs during the Autumn and Spring terms.

Early regulatory problems (RPs), including excessive crying, feeding problems, and sleeping difficulties, can have adverse long-term effects on behavioural, emotional, and/or social outcomes. However, despite the substantial relevance for individuals’ mental health, comprehensive findings on adverse effects of early RPs are still missing.

During the past years, within a transnational project Infant2Adult, we have been investigating the impact of early RPs on mental health outcomes from childhood to adulthood, specifically examining multimodal neurobiological markers as possible underlying mechanisms. In the talk, Satja Bratec will present several recent findings on long-term effects of early RPs, based on three separate and diverse longitudinal datasets. The first group of studies examined associations between RPs and mental health outcomes; the second group of studies assessed whether RPs were associated with changes in intrinsic functional brain connectivity, and the final few studies analysed morphological brain changes associated with early RPs.

Overall, findings demonstrate adverse long-term neurobiological and mental health effects of early problems with body regulation, reaching even into adulthood, and provide novel insights for potential prevention strategies for undesirable infant-to-adult trajectories.