Over Protective Parents, Could They Damage Your

Brain?

By Amanda Shepherd and 

Alex Scheman

What was done?

A Japanese scientist named Kosuke Narita looked at the brains of 50 people in their 20's and had them fill out a survey about their parents in the first 26 years of their lifeThey used a survey called The Parental Bonding Instrument which asks the person to rate their relationships with their parents in a number of areas

Neglect and Overbearing

-He found that people with neglectful parents had less gray matter in the pre-frontal cortex of their brain (the part of your brain that concerns personality)-The same results were found with parents who were over bearing -This part of your brain develops in you childhood, and up until this study, abnormalities were only thought to be caused by schizophrenia and other mental illnesses-Narita believes that this is caused by the increased amount of the stress hormone

Potential Problems-An Australian scientist named Stephen Wood says that this study may not be accurate-He says that it is quite possible for the subjects studied to have been born with the abnormality, and the relationship with their parents just lowered it even more-He also notices that the study excluded people with low socioeconomic status and uneducated parents which are two things known to contribute to bad performance on cognitive tests"The effect they found may be real, but why worry about parenting if there are other factors that are so much larger?" -Stephen Wood

Acknowledgments

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18633-mom-and-dad-stop-stifling-me--its-damaging-my-brain.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=life

Q&A

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Seminar QuestionsDo you think there is enough evidence to support this theory?Why could this information be useful?Do you think that it is reverse order, and that they are born with this abnormality and the relationship with their parents just increased the problem?

Do you think there is enough evidence to support this theory?What other tests could be done to prove or disprove this theory? Do you think that it is reverse order, and that they are born with this abnormality and the relationship with their parents just increased the problem?