GOLD Learning Speakers

Our latest understanding of developmental neuroscience is based understanding epigenes. These are influenced by the earliest environment encountered, as the switches make “predictive adaptive responses”. These influence brain development as well as subsequent psychological and physiological health over the lifespan. Early gene expression makes the brain and its circuitry, and neuronal circuits are the essence of what we subsequently become: “we are our brains”. Cortisol is the most well known activator of the epigene, but it only does so when it can act unopposed for long periods of time. The “opposition” to cortisol comes from the combined effect of dopamine (the reward hormone) and oxytocin (the social hormone). Resilience is therefore about healthy dopamine and oxytocin circuits. It is mother’s presence that is required for the establishment of these. Preterm infants need resilience, and must have their mothers with them always.

The underlying science to all biology is that genes make brains and bodies, and brains make those bodies behave to accomplish ‘reproductive fitness’. Recent advances have shown that the ENVIRONMENT influences the genes through epigenetic processes, and fires and wires brain circuits, and also determines highly conserved behaviors necessary for fitness. Human reproductive fitness begins with birth and breastfeeding, and the necessary environment is maternal-infant SKIN-TO-SKIN CONTACT (SSC). Essential steps are described, transition to extrauterine life, maternal regulation, biological roots of bonding, breastfeeding as an integrated behavior with sleep, with early maternal sensitization and later attuned parenting. The opposite of SSC is SEPARATION, leading to toxic stress with a number of mal-adaptions that may remain for life. The most significant relate to emotional and social intelligence, and failures in breastfeeding. The ecobiodevelopmental model captures this accurately, but must be applied at birth to accomplish fitness for early childhood development.

The central dogma of all biological processes is based on DNA and genes, how these make proteins and specifically neurons, and how such neurons result in a brain producing behaviours, with the overriding objective of ‘reproductive fitness’. This presentation translates this dogma to the context of human birth, with the emphasis on the role of the environment is epigenetically informing genes how to make protein, through environmental sensory inputs formatting the brain to that environment, in which reproductive fitness encompasses not just survive but also thrive. The perinatal period is crucial to a number of biological processes, with the mother’s body being the defining environment for human newborns. These can be listed as transition to extra-uterine life, early suckling and colostrum protection, microbiota protection, sensory regulation of physiology, and sensory bonding to parent, synchrony of state organisation with feed and sleep cycling, synchrony and sensitization to and of the mother (and father) with a narrow window of opportunity in the first day. All these processes are place dependent, i.e. only happen in immediate and continuous maternal-infant skin-to-skin contact. Separation has immediate adverse consequences, disrupting all described above. It is not merely a temporary hold up of positive development; it is an active adaptation of stress biology with life long consequences for social and physical health. Bowlby first described this concept as the “Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness”, Narvaez provides contemporary updating in the “Evolved Developmental Niche”.

The underlying science to all biology is that genes make brains and bodies, and brains make those bodies behave to accomplish ‘reproductive fitness’. Recent advances have shown that the ENVIRONMENT influences the genes through epigenetic processes, and fires and wires brain circuits, and also determines highly conserved behaviors necessary for fitness. Human reproductive fitness begins with birth and breastfeeding, and the necessary environment is maternal-infant SKIN-TO-SKIN CONTACT (SSC). Essential steps are described, transition to extrauterine life, maternal regulation, biological roots of bonding, breastfeeding as an integrated behavior with sleep, with early maternal sensitization and later attuned parenting. The opposite of SSC is SEPARATION, leading to toxic stress with a number of mal-adaptions that may remain for life. The most significant relate to emotional and social intelligence, and failures in breastfeeding. The ecobiodevelopmental model captures this accurately, but must be applied at birth to accomplish fitness for early childhood development.