Early-life experience - stimulation

Professor Bruce McEwen notes that stimulation during early life can lead to a better cognitive outcome.

There are also additional factors that have to be borne in mind: novelty exposure. Akaysha Tang, who is a colleague at the University of New Mexico, has shown that, if you expose pups to novelty and control for the amount of maternal care that they get, this leads to better cognitive development, better social development, certain skills, and so in addition to the maternal care, this has an additive effect on how well these pups will adapt – these animals will adapt – to their environment. Finally, she’s also shown that the stability of maternal care, the consistency, is very important for determining these long-term outcomes. I think all of these concepts are translatable into human terms, and I think there’s evidence that all of these factors, good maternal care, consistent parental care, consistent home environment, does have long-lasting effects.