NEW working paper
Young children who experience severe neglect bear the burdens of a range of adverse consequences, including cognitive delays, impairments in executive functioning, and disruptions of the body’s stress response, says a new Working Paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. “The Science of Neglect: The Persistent Absence of Responsive Care Disrupts the Developing Brain,” explains why severe neglect can cause more harm to a young child’s development than overt physical abuse, why neglect is so harmful in the earliest years of life, and why preventive efforts and effective interventions are so crucial in helping to ensure better long-term outcomes in learning, health, and parenting of the next generation.
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Studying the Effects of Global Adversity, Two Generations at a Time
As part of an ongoing series of research profiles of Center-affiliated faculty members, a new feature on the Center's web site focuses on the work of Theresa Betancourt, M.A., Sc.D., an associate professor of child health and human rights in the department of global health and population at the Harvard School of Public Health, and director of the Research Program on Children and Global Adversity at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. Through her work with former child soldiers in Sierra Leone and Rwandan children whose parents have HIV/AIDS, Betancourt hopes to demonstrate that, even in crisis situations, combining attention to children’s developmental needs with short-term survival efforts only magnifies the long-range benefits for individuals, families, and societies.
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special journal supplementJournal Features Center Affiliates' Work on Biology of Early Adversity
The developmental and biological consequences of early social adversity are explored in a special supplement of the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) published in print on Oct. 16, 2012. “Biological Embedding of Early Social Adversity: From Fruit Flies to Kindergartners” features articles by Center Director Jack P. Shonkoff and Center-affiliated Harvard faculty members Takao Hensch and Charles A. Nelson III. The supplement also contains articles by members of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, including: W. Thomas Boyce of the University of British Columbia; Greg J. Duncan of the University of California, Irvine; Nathan A. Fox of the University of Maryland College Park; Megan R. Gunnar of the University of Minnesota; and Bruce McEwen of The Rockefeller University. Articles are available free to the public at the PNAS web site.
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opportunities for harvard undergraduatesConte Center Offers Wintersession Activities
The Conte Center at Harvard University, in collaboration with the Center on the Developing Child, is sponsoring a Wintersession workshop for Harvard undergraduates titled, “Perspectives on Mental Illness,” from Monday, January 21, to Friday, January 25, 2013. This weeklong session will feature visits to McLean Hospital, personal stories from speakers from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and an introduction to policy issues in child mental health.
In addition, the Lichtman Laboratory, part of the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department and the Conte Center, will be offering an introduction to the field of connectomics with a brief hands-on course called, “Mapping Brain Circuits with Electron Microscopy.” Students will have the opportunity to directly participate in the process of reconstructing mouse brain circuits, generating authentic new data and documenting key steps in the process. Read more and register >> |