Dr Sharon Moalem |
Have the memories of primary school have almost faded from memory for you?
How well can you recall the faces of your fellow students? Can you summon the names of the teachers, the secretary, and the principal? Can you hear the way the bell sounded? How about the smell of the cafeteria on a rainy day? The ache of your first crush? The panic of finding yourself in the toilets at the same time as the school bully?
Dr Moalem believes that your childhood experiences affect you throughout your life. Even things you cannot consciously remember are swimming around inside your brain, ready to pop out and surprise you when you least expect them to. Not only have your childhood experiences affected you, but they have left also left a mark on your genes and will affect your children and the lives of future generations.
Take bullying for example, "everyone agrees that bullying can leave severe mental scars". Sometimes the immense level of pain can even bring people to the point where they "act on desires to physically harm themselves."
One group of researchers set out to try to prove the impact of bullying by studying identical twins from the age of 5. By using twins for the research, they were able to measure the impact of bullying on their genes because twins have identical DNA. The study started when the twins were aged 5 and they had not experienced any bullying before then. You'll be glad to know that the researchers didn't torture the twins like scientists used to treat Swiss mice. When the researchers later visited the twins, now aged 12, they found a striking difference in their genes, which had occurred as a result of their childhood experiences.
The scientists discovered that the Bullied Twin's genes had switched themselves off. This shows that even if you don't remember the experience of being bullied, your genes will still remember it.
The researchers gave the twins some tests which included "public speaking and mental arithmetic -- experiences that most of us find stressful and would rather avoid." They discovered that the Bullied Twin had lower levels of cortisol which is a hormone that helps your body to survive when you are stressed. So, because the Bullied Twin had experienced more stressful situations, his body had decided to turn down the level of cortisol that it was sending into the body at stressful times. The body changed to protect itself from the stressful experiences because of the negative effects of too much cortisol.
article adapted from HUFFINGTON POST:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-moalem/bullyings-terrible-legacy_b_5142857.html
by Sharon Moalem (adapted to enable understanding by those with lower literacy than the target audience of the original article.)
How well can you recall the faces of your fellow students? Can you summon the names of the teachers, the secretary, and the principal? Can you hear the way the bell sounded? How about the smell of the cafeteria on a rainy day? The ache of your first crush? The panic of finding yourself in the toilets at the same time as the school bully?
Dr Moalem believes that your childhood experiences affect you throughout your life. Even things you cannot consciously remember are swimming around inside your brain, ready to pop out and surprise you when you least expect them to. Not only have your childhood experiences affected you, but they have left also left a mark on your genes and will affect your children and the lives of future generations.
Take bullying for example, "everyone agrees that bullying can leave severe mental scars". Sometimes the immense level of pain can even bring people to the point where they "act on desires to physically harm themselves."
One group of researchers set out to try to prove the impact of bullying by studying identical twins from the age of 5. By using twins for the research, they were able to measure the impact of bullying on their genes because twins have identical DNA. The study started when the twins were aged 5 and they had not experienced any bullying before then. You'll be glad to know that the researchers didn't torture the twins like scientists used to treat Swiss mice. When the researchers later visited the twins, now aged 12, they found a striking difference in their genes, which had occurred as a result of their childhood experiences.
The scientists discovered that the Bullied Twin's genes had switched themselves off. This shows that even if you don't remember the experience of being bullied, your genes will still remember it.
The researchers gave the twins some tests which included "public speaking and mental arithmetic -- experiences that most of us find stressful and would rather avoid." They discovered that the Bullied Twin had lower levels of cortisol which is a hormone that helps your body to survive when you are stressed. So, because the Bullied Twin had experienced more stressful situations, his body had decided to turn down the level of cortisol that it was sending into the body at stressful times. The body changed to protect itself from the stressful experiences because of the negative effects of too much cortisol.
article adapted from HUFFINGTON POST:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-moalem/bullyings-terrible-legacy_b_5142857.html
by Sharon Moalem (adapted to enable understanding by those with lower literacy than the target audience of the original article.)