BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Biological Psychology



Abstract

The paper has three parts. Part 1 describes about the effects of stress on babies, if the mothers were exposed to stress during pregnancy. It discusses two studies relevant to the phenomena. Part II describes about the drug usage and in effects. The part III describes about the study that demonstrates that the use of reward affect the learning and memory.

Biological Psychology

Part 1

Introduction

The studies defined the relation of stress in pregnancy linked to depression in offspring. First study was related to mice, co-authored by Dr Aine Behan from the department of physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), has revealed changes in the brains of offspring of mothers exposed to stress during pregnancy. The researchers have shown that stress during pregnancy can alter behavioural responses and reduce the number of a type of brain cell called glial cells in a structure called the hippocampus. A deficit in glial cells has previously been found in people with depressive illness in adulthood.

Behan's study reported that there was no change in the number of neurons in the hippocampus. The researchers observed behaviour indicative of memory problems, likely to be caused by hippocampal changes, in the adolescent offspring of the stressed mice. The memory deficits were more prominent in the female offspring than the male offspring. These changes were not observed in the unstressed (control) group. They also measured the levels of the main stress hormone in rodents,corticosterone, in the blood of the offspring, and found no differences between the unstressed group and the stressed group.

Study 2 shows that depression in mothers increases the stress hormone in that foetuses born to depressed mothers have greater levels of this stress hormone, in addition other behavioural and neural differences. The study evaluated the relation between mother's depression and the development of an infant's system, which controls their stress responses, as well as emotions and moods. They demonstrated that infants born to depressed women had higher levels of one particular stress hormone called adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). However, levels of the main stress hormone in humans, cortisol, were unchanged. Behavioural measures showed the infants to have reduced tone of muscles as compared to those born to females who were not stressed and they quickly adjusted to stimuli just like a light, bell, rattle - a trigger for neurological maturity. This research shows that females experiencing symptoms of stress during pregnancy should talk to a relevant therapist. The interventions done for mother-child bonding in the postnatal period can affect and balance the effects of production of stress hormone in early life.

Discussion

For many years, psychiatry have been concerned about females experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety in their pregnancy and in post natal period. Multiple research are done to evaluate the health psychology and stress in pregnancy and its effects for mothers and infants, and their development (Dunkel Schetter, C. 2010,pp. 531-558) The purpose of this paper is to review the latest researches on effects of depression in ...