Resilience is written in the brain, research finds

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 2 years ago

Resilience is written in the brain, research finds

By Stuart Layt

New research has shown how “resilient” someone is in the face of stressful situations can be written on their brain, with scientists hopeful they can use this knowledge to help people become more resilient in the face of stressful times.

Researchers from the Gatt Resilience Lab at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) and UNSW Sydney have confirmed for the first time that certain physical structures within the brain are associated with resilience.

Researchers have discovered resilient people have developed different physical structures in their brains.

Researchers have discovered resilient people have developed different physical structures in their brains.Credit: iStock

Resilience in a research context refers to how well someone adapts to stressful situations to retain their mental wellbeing.

The researchers were specifically looking at early life stress (ELS) and its effect on adults, using a targeted questionnaire to establish ESL such as parental divorce, bullying, or even exposure to natural disasters as a child.

They then matched that with brain scans of people, looking for any differences in the brain structure of people who had ELS and high wellbeing – classified as resilient – compared to people who had similar early experiences but who reported low wellbeing.

Haeme Park, a senior postdoctoral fellow at NeuRA and UNSW said they found clear differences in the physical structure of the brains between the two groups.

Spatial maps of the five independent components associated with wellbeing.

Spatial maps of the five independent components associated with wellbeing.Credit: Nature

“Having a tightly connected neural network is often seen as a good thing and what we saw was that there were two specific networks that were only seen in individuals who reported high wellbeing but who also had early life stress exposure,” Dr Park said.

“These networks were in the temporal and parietal as well as the frontal regions of the brain - these regions are related to emotion and cognitive functioning.”

Advertisement

By contrast, people with low wellbeing had much looser, keyless connected structures in the same areas.

Dr Park said they believed they had found clear evidence that stress early in life can leave a lasting impact on the structure of the brain.

“There’s a lot of research which shows early life stress has an effect on adult mental health,” she said.

“A lot of that research has focused on comparing people with serious mental illnesses with mentally healthy people, but the fact that we can show differences between people who would all be considered mentally ‘healthy’ is a big step forward.”

The researchers believe the structures have built up in people who are resilient as their brain adapted to the stressful situations over time, like someone building muscle by lifting weights.

People who did not have ELS had different structures again, with fewer connections but which were probably “more efficient”, Dr Park said.

Loading

She said they wanted to find out why some people didn’t develop these structures, and whether there was any way to develop the findings into practical measures to improve resilience in people.

“We’re hoping to develop trajectories that allow us to model factors that influence wellbeing and resilience,” she said.

“The key point is that going through early life stress can have an affect on your brain as an adult, but it doesn’t have to be negative – if you’re adopting strategies that have a benefit it can change and boost your resilience.”

Researchers used brain scans and questionnaires from the TWIN-E study and 242 healthy Australian adults, with most taking part for at least 10 years.

The research was done in collaboration with researchers at Stamford University in the United States, and the results have been published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

Most Viewed in National

Loading