Université Paris-Saclay, UVSQ, Inserm, CESP, 94807, Villejuif, France.
Institut du Psychotraumatisme de l'Enfant et de l'Adolescent, Conseil Départemental Yvelines et Hauts-de-Seine et Centre Hospitalier des Versailles, 78000, Versailles, France.
Proc Biol Sci. 2023 Nov 29;290(2011):20231945. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2023.1945. Epub 2023 Nov 15.
Previous work has proposed that balancing energy expenditure towards body and brain development in an optimal fashion results in a negative relationship between somatic and neurocognitive growth during development. An important issue, largely overlooked so far, is the extent to which this energetic trade-off is influenced by early life environmental factors. In this study, we estimated the association between neurocognitive (measured by working memory ability) and somatic (measured by body-mass index) developmental trajectories, while taking into account multiple dimensions of early life adversity. Results of our initial growth curve model were consistent with this brain-body trade-off in both girls and boys. In a subsequent model, we showed that early life adversity had positive associations with somatic and negative associations with neurocognitive growth trajectories, although the direct negative coupling between them remained consistent. Finally, a multidimensional adversity model, separating the effects of deprivation, threat and unpredictability, revealed that the dimension of deprivation-reflecting lack of access to resources and cognitive stimulation-contributed the most to both somatic and neurocognitive growth patterns. These results suggest that the way individuals balance energy between these two biological constructs during development is partly linked to environmental influences through phenotypic plasticity.
先前的研究提出，为了使身体和大脑的发育达到最佳状态而平衡能量消耗，会导致发育过程中身体和神经认知增长之间呈负相关。到目前为止，一个很大程度上被忽视的重要问题是，这种能量权衡在多大程度上受到早期生活环境因素的影响。在这项研究中，我们在考虑到早期生活逆境的多个维度的情况下，估计了神经认知（通过工作记忆能力衡量）和身体（通过体重指数衡量）的发育轨迹之间的关联。我们初始增长曲线模型的结果在女孩和男孩中都与这种大脑-身体的权衡一致。在随后的模型中，我们表明，早期生活逆境与身体生长轨迹呈正相关，与神经认知生长轨迹呈负相关，但它们之间的直接负向耦合仍然一致。最后，一个多维逆境模型，将剥夺、威胁和不可预测性的影响分开，表明反映缺乏资源和认知刺激的剥夺维度对身体和神经认知的生长模式都有最大的贡献。这些结果表明，个体在发育过程中在这两个生物结构之间平衡能量的方式部分与其通过表型可塑性受到环境影响的方式有关。
