In October, Michael Burman, Ph.D., department of psychology, College of Arts and Sciences was invited to take part in a panel on the effects of early life stress at the International Society for Developmental Psychology Conference. The title of the virtual panel was: ‘Early life stress exposure yields persistent physiological, morphological, and behavioral changes in preclinical rodent models’. During this panel, he gave a presentation titled: “Amygdala crf cells mediate the effects of neonatal pain on subsequent stress-induced tactile hypersensitivity.” Dr. Burman said of the event, “the larger scientific community is really starting to realize the importance of early life stress and trauma on later life mental and physical health outcomes. This was an exciting opportunity to participate in a panel by a variety of experts discussing how early life stress affects brain development and later life behavior.” The presentation also included work done by The Burman Collaborative, which included Mariah Berchulski, (UNE 2021 Neuroscience) and graduate student Erica Russo, B.S. (MS UNE 2021). The team examines changes in the brain caused by painful procedures, similar to those that might be done without analgesics in babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Previous data has shown a correlation between time spent in the NICU and subsequent anxiety disorders and chronic pain. The Burman Collaborative is working to determine a biological mechanism that may explain the predisposition of NICU patients to future disorders. One possible mechanism the team has been focused on is a population of cells that express corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH), a hormone often associated with stress, in the amygdala (part of the brain that is involved in emotional processing). They found neonatal pain drives CRH expression and produces behavioral changes in anxiety that persist at least until the juvenile stage that are dependent upon this hormone, but only in male rats. The Burman Collaborative is the first to demonstrate that these cells might serve as the mechanism for the connection between neonatal pain and juvenile anxiety disorders and to demonstrate a strong sex difference in pain/stress processing at such an early age. Dr. Burman emphasized that many of the other speakers are also finding sex differences in the later effects of neonatal stress, and he states, “this will set the stage for important future research understanding how early life trauma affects men and women differently.”
Funding for this research was provided by NIGMS P20GM103643 (Meng PI), and NICHD/NIGMS 1R15HD091841 (Burman PI)