Amygdala burnout: Understanding how early life adversity impacts upon brain structure

Our childhoods all differ, with some sadly experiencing highly stressful or distressing events, such as neglect, disasters or abuse. There is some evidence that having these types of experience can influence mental and physical health as an adult, but the connection across the lifespan remains poorly understood. Some people will have bad childhood experiences and go on to have poor health as an adult, but some will not see any effect on their adult health at all. But why do we see this difference between people? If we can begin to answer this question we have a better chance of helping young people who do have stressful experiences in childhood to go on to be healthy and happy adults. The purpose of our project is to bring together researchers to work together on different parts of the question. The foundation of the project is at the biological level, trying to understand what changes in the brains of young people who go through stressful experiences. We will then combine this with insights from physicians and mental-health professionals to link the biology to peoples' lived experience. Finally, we will bring in people who research the social aspects of health to see how differences in the society that people live in, and their place in that society, might influence what outcomes they have.