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The effects of early-life adversity on cognition: A comparative approach.

Ziel

This research programme will investigate how adversity experienced early in life affects cognition in adulthood in two different long-lived species, humans and European starlings. Previous research has suggested that there might be cross-species similarities in the way early-life adversity shapes cognition, but the extent of commonalities has not been systematically investigated. I will focus on three cognitive domains where we have some evidence that early-life adversity may be important: impulsivity, dietary cognition, and threat-related cognition. For each domain, I will characterise how the trait relates to different facets of early-life adversity. These will be measured using socioeconomic and familial variables in humans, but in young starlings they will be experimentally manipulated via cross-fostering and hand-rearing siblings apart so that they experience different early histories. To measure the adult outcomes in each cognitive domain, I will develop novel behavioural paradigms with directly analogous versions in the two species. I will also examine whether telomere length, a cellular measure of cumulative stress exposure, statistically mediates the relationships between early-life adversity and the cognitive outcomes, thus testing recent theoretical models based on psychological adaptation to ones own physical state. In the second phase of the programme, I will focus on adaptive questions: do the observed effects of early-life adversity simply represent pathology, or can they be considered as adaptive responses? To test this, I will create ‘novel worlds’: experimental environments whose parameters I can vary systematically to establish whether there are circumstances under which individuals who have experienced early-life stress actually perform better than those from more benign developmental backgrounds. Thus, I will move beyond cataloguing the cognitive consequences of early-life adversity, and begin to explain them.

Finanzierungsplan

ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

Gastgebende Einrichtung

UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
Netto-EU-Beitrag
€ 2 080 040,00
Adresse
KINGS GATE
NE1 7RU Newcastle Upon Tyne
Vereinigtes Königreich

Auf der Karte ansehen

Region
North East (England) Northumberland and Tyne and Wear Tyneside
Aktivitätstyp
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Gesamtkosten
€ 2 080 040,00

Begünstigte (1)