And…. it appears to correlate with their mother’s.
In Psychology Today, Dr. Eugene Rubin writes of a fascinating new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry:
Upshot: Researchers got together 45 infants whose average age was four weeks.
They then had their moms fill out a State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and found that about 10% of the moms had scores, suggesting clinically significant anxiety.
The researchers then did a functional MRI of the babies (totally safe, don’t worry), and inserted white noise bursts at random intervals to see how their brain flow reacted.
Here’s the fascinating finding, via Dr. Rubin: “Brain regions that showed increased responsivity to white noise bursts were similar to brain regions that are hyper-responsive in adults with anxiety disorders. In addition, brain areas that are involved in functional networks that are hyper-responsive in adults with anxiety disorders were also hyper-responsive in infants of mothers with higher trait anxiety.”
In other words, babies at four weeks old were already showing signs of predisposition to anxiety disorders!
That exclamation point isn’t “Let’s party!” exclamation. It’s shock. But really, it’s not terribly shocking because pretty much every anxious person you talk with says, “So…I had a mom or dad that was really…”
The researchers conclude that it’s possible that “functional networks are already developing by four weeks of age.”
Of course, this will be fodder for the whole nature vs. nurture thing, and while it’s possible that four week old babies are already triggered, environmentally, it sure seems more likely that they were born with this thing, doesn’t it?
So here’s a practical take-away: if you’re really anxious, don’t blame yourself or anyone else. Your functional networks, predisposing you to this, were probably already developing before you knew anything except milk, and probably, in utero, as well.
And please don’t blame your mom, either. Her functional networks were probably developing at that age, as well.
Christians should just plain old remove ourselves from the blame game. It’s everywhere these days, it’s destructive, and it’s sinful. (I’m aware I’m blaming the act of blaming 🙂
[Painting: Gabrielle and Jean by Renoir. Note: Gabrielle was technically not Jean’s mom, and yes, from this painting, neither seems as though they’d score high on trait anxiety, and yes, little Jean is not having an MRI. But… it’s in the public domain, and shows what could be a mom and her baby, and so the shoe kind of fits].
