♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: tonight, we continue our ongoing exploration of the and will our ongoing exploration will and human brain with a look at the relationship between childhood adversity and the developing brain. our genes provide the basic blueprint for brain development, but our individual experiences can shape and alter our underlying brain circuitry. traumatic early experiences, in particular, can often have powerful, long-term effects on the brain's structure and function. these life events can include parental abuse, neglect, family violence, poverty, and bullying. deborah temkin understands this issue firsthand. her experience being bullied as

a child led her to pursue a career studying its prevention. she joins me today along with a remarkable group of scientists. charles nelson of harvard medical school. kimberly noble of columbia univsersity. ken dodge of duke university. michael meaney of mcgill univerestiy. and, once again, my co-host and my friend, dr. eric kandel. as all of you now know, he is a nobel laureate, a professor at columbia university, and a howard hughes medical investigator. thank you for coming. so what are we going to do today? dr. kandel: well, outline -- charlie: what do we explore? dr. kandel: you outlined it so well, and the last program, we considered competitive sports among young people, and we realized, of course, that in competitive athletics, kids fall down or get pushed down, and sometimes, they suffer concussions as a result of this, in which the brain bashes up against the rigid skull, potentially causing damage to the brain. today, we are going to see the

astonishing fact that you referred to that you can get similar, and in some cases more severe, damage to the brain without altering the position of the brain in the skull, the result of early social and psychological adversities, such as parental abuse, parental neglect, poverty, or bullying. some children who have been brought up in an environment in which they don't have appropriate intellectual stimulation, appropriate bonding with parents actually have pathways that don't develop in the brain, and the hippocampus, the structure critical for cognitive function and for memory, may not reach its normal size. but beyond cognitive abilities, other aspects of people's health are affected as a result of these deprivations in early-childhood experiences. for example, people who have

these early experiences are more susceptible to depression and to suicidal thoughts, more likely to be involved in drugs, more likely to be susceptible to metabolic diseases and to cardiovascular diseases, and the insult need not be severe. even moderate impairment in the the bonding between parents and children can have an effect. how does this come about? what it becomes about is an alteration in gene expression. the dna is present in every cell. the genes are carried in dna. they are present in every single cell and present especially in a compartment called the "nucleus," and in the nucleus, there are two one-meter-long strands of dna, one from the father, one from the mother, and this is an enormous length of dna and poses a problem for the cell.

how do fit these two long stretches of dna into the nucleus? the way the cell solves the problem is the nucleus does two things. one, it divides the dna into 23 small pieces, and it takes an analogous piece from the father, an analogous piece from the mother, and it combines them into chromosomes, so we have 23 pairs of chromosomes. moreover, we then wrap the dna around spool-like structures, called "nucleosomes," and the whole region is called "chromatin." this tight packing reduces the volume of the dna more. now, the chromatin is beautifully organized, with two key regions. there is a regulatory region that determines whether or not a particular gene will be turned on and a coding region that actually encodes the messenger that gives rise to a protein. now, these regulatory signals of the regulatory regions can be of two kinds. they can be activators, transcriptional activators, or they can be silencers, like the dna methylation. now, normally, for the sperm and the egg, these transcription

factors, these regulatory factors that are activated by environmental experiences, are wiped clean, and the infant starts with a clean slate. so the normal inheritance is you start off with a clean slate, and your own life experiences add and subtract transcription factors in order to activate genes. but, occasionally, very traumatic experiences of the kind that have been described by isabelle mansuy and mike meaney, that we will also discuss, will have an effect of a parent and a child -- for example, depriving the infant mouse of access to its mother that will cause an alteration in gene expression, a shutting off of a gene, a methylation, that can be carried on not just for the life of that infant but for several generations after that. so this damage, in principle, can be carried on for a number of generations, so in addition to having a genetic variance,

you can have genetic traits, which are carried from one generation to another, so simply, to summarize, what is really amazing is these social childhood,s early in childhood adversity, can lead to dna changes that alter the development of the brain, alter healthy stress responses, and lead to cognitive health consequences or social consequences. to discuss this wonderful topic of seeing how environmental contingencies can't affect the brain, we have got a derisive group of people -- contingencies can affect the brain. we have charles nelson. he is going to discuss the alterations as a result of living in an orphanage. charlie: let me begin with charles nelson and shaping the brain. as we already talked about, the dna is laid down, and

this forms a blueprint for brain development, and after birth, that blueprint is fundamentally altered by experience. the issue for us is if experiences are good, you can facilitate good brain develop it, but if they are bad, you can facilitate unhealthy brain develop it. perhaps one of the worst you can do is deprive the brain of it needs, particular during what we call critical experiences, and these are sensitive periods, when the brain is susceptible to experience, and if the child must be as brain goes through -- and if the child's brain goes through that, like neglect early in life, of those, children wind up growing up in institutions, and my colleagues have demonstrated for many years that children who are abandoned at birth, placed in institutions, showed dramatic changes in development.

that kidse, we see who grow up in institutions have an iq of around 66, which is far, far below normal, where his children who have not grown up in institutions have an iq around 100. we have also seen that the risk of having a mental health problem is dramatically increased for kids growing up in institutions. here we show at age 12, children with a history of institution, they have a major psychiatric disorder at a higher rate for those not at an institution. aside iq and psychiatric illness, we also show changes in memory and what we call "executive functions." the brain, some of the changes in the brain can explain some of the changes we see in behavior. the left hemisphere, that bundle of blue that you see known as ," within the

temporal look, there are connecting areas that are involved in memory and emotion, and the frontal lobe is involved in regulating emotion and our cognitive state, generally. integrity ofthe this bundle of fiber is dramatically in -- reduced with those with a history of institutional care, and it works less efficiently and less constructively, and that can also explain some of the high rate ec with mental health problems. to show ising i want that we know that early in life, children with a history of institutional care show fundamental changes in their ability to relate to other people. think about caregivers. detachment. if you have fundamentally altered the relationship that children have with their caregivers early on, how does that play out? we have a video of two-year-old boys, and one, the one in the white, has spent his whole life

in the institution, and the other has never been in an institution, and all we have asked is for them to interact with each other, and notice the behavior of the boy on the right. he is aggressive and does not know how to react. he basically attacks the other boy. even if you do not speak romanian, you can see how typical this boy's language is, and this goes on for quite a while, and what we see is not only do the children with institutional care not know how to react, that the other children are essentially turned off by this and want nothing to do with this child, and it is very disturbing to see. charlie: can we do anything about that? mr. nelson: what we will talk about in a minute is what happens when you take these kids out of an institution and put them into foster care. charlie: let me talk to kimberly. it impacts them quite

a bit. poverty is based on family income, so the federal government defines the poverty line each year, and right now, for a quite a bit. poverty is based on family income, so the federal family of four, it is right around 25,000 dollars, and incidentally, that is the same if the family is living in new york city or in south dakota, even though the cost of living is quite different in those places you now, despite the fact that it is quite challenging rearing a family of four on $25,000, poverty affects currently one in five children across the u.s. of course, family circumstances combined with more than family income, so when we think about socioeconomic status, we think about not only income but also occupational status, and when we talk about socioeconomic status in this way, we know it is associated with a broad range about, import and two from iq to high school graduation, but as neuroscientists, we know these outcomes are very important, but

they do not tell us much about the brain. taking a neuroscience lens, we know that different circuits support different cognitive skills, and so by using a neuroscience framework, we can ask which particular cognitive skills seem to be most associated with family socioeconomic circumstance, and that is exactly what we did in a series of studies about 10 years ago, where we got socio- economically diverse people and asked how do socioeconomic factors predict children's cognitive development, and we found a number of different

things. first of all, we found that, in general, children from socioeconomically advanced homes outperform children from more disability homes in terms of their memory performance. and more recently, we and other investigators have been investigating the way that the very structure of the brain varies as a function of family socioeconomic ground, so we have known since the 1950's that a structure in the brain, known as the hippocampus, located deep inside our brains, is critical for brain development. we have also learned that in many cases, a type of hippocampus is associated with better memory skills, so we rationalize that children would have a larger hippocampus, and that is what we found. as you can see here, the hippocampus is shown in green, and children from homes with greater family incomes tended to have a larger hippocampus size than to children from more socioeconomically disadvantaged -- it is incredible to know that this affects the hippocampus. fact.e: it is an amazing it shows you how so early in life you can be disadvantaged. dr. kandel: exactly.

and, really, we were comparing this before to physical damage to the brain. what we are seeing is these early deprivations are enormous in consequences to brain function, and this is a brilliant example of that. ms. noble: well, thank you, eric, and want to look at the mechanism, what it is that leads sothis -- these differences we can design interventions. so, for example, with washington university in st. louis, they have suggested that the key might be in family. beingw that the family disadvantaged face issues every day, and stress has profound and test getting affects on the developed of the hippocampus, so differences in family stress may be that link. developing brain is

very plastic, so they are discussing whether these links can be reversed. now, our additional studies in children's behavior had some ther things along socioeconomic lines. we also found socioeconomic differences in light which skills as well as executive functioning or their ability to -- we also found socioeconomic differences in language skills as well as executive functioning or their ability to self regulate. the structure of children's brains. a study wen see recently published, showing higher family income was related full onher size of the the surface of the brain, which we know is responsible for heavy lifting. that is right, the cerebral cortex on the outside of the brain. now, here, in this figure, every

area that you see represented in color represents an area where there is an association between family income and the size of the full's in children's brains. furthermore, the areas of yellow are where we see the relationship most strongly. the picture on the left shows the side of the brain. the areas in yellow are part of the frontal and temporal cortex that are responsible for language development. that picture on the right is a picture straight down the middle of the brain, and the areas of yellow are part of the prefrontal cortex that deal with the area of self regulation and improper impulses. a couple of points to note about this finding. first of all, the relationship was not linear, and by that, the incomest links between and other was among the disadvantaged, so that means dollar by dollar, any differences in family income were associated with

proportionally differences in brain structure among the poorest families. secondly, and this point is really critical, there were dramatic what we call individual differences. an analogy i like to use is between gender and height. we all know that in childhood, on average, boys tend to be taller than girls, but across america, we will find some girls who are taller than some girls, and the analogy is similar here, so, on average, people from higher income homes tended to have higher surface brains than those from disadvantaged hans, but there was some variability, from advantaged homes having smaller brain services, so in no way could i know from or child family income alone know that particular child's brain size, and the final point i would like to make about these findings is there are likely multiple mechanisms at play

here, so our lab is particular interested in trying to find out how language exposure that the quality and quantity of words as well as differences in family stress, may be responsible. again, the developing brain is remarkably plastic, so we have reason to believe that appropriate interventions may be able to reverse or even prevent these effects. along those lines, i am part of a group of social scientists and neuroscientists who are currently raising funds for the first child poverty -- which will reduce poverty and measure the effect that it has on the developing brain and mind. ♪

♪ charlie: do we know why it has an impact on some lower income families and not on others? that is part of what we're trying to understand, the science of resilience, and i think some of it is different as in parenting. parenting style can buffer many adversities, so that is one of the things. another situation could be, and you emphasized it, that poverty carries with it a great deal of stress, and some people might be able to handle it more successfully than others. stress is very powerful. charlie: social factors? past 30 years,

people like myself have followed them from childhood into early adulthood in order to identify experiences that have placed them at risk. we have identified some within the first five. those children who have been maltreated or abused by parents in the first five years of life, they have been rejected by parents, harshly treated. who have experienced maltreatment by parents are become juvenile delinquents, on average, and to become arrested for violent crimes in young adulthood. girls are likely to develop bece delinquents, on average, and to become a pattern of deviant behavior which may include unwanted pregnancies. the second kind of abuse is by peers, children who are bullied, victimized, socially rejected, just like in the kindergarten or first and second grade classrooms are also at risk of growing up and having problems in adolescence and adulthood, suicide and even

violent reactions. now, the next question we ask is , what is it about, those experiences, that has an impact on children psychologically? how is it that these experiences can lead someone to become violent question mark to study this problem, we brought children into the laboratory -- to become violent? to study this problem, we brought children into the laboratory and exposed them to different experiences, threats, provocations, cheating in games, and exposing them by having them watch a video, television shots, and have them imagine being provoked or being threatened, a hyperdentified defensive response that children who have been abused experience. this pattern is in some way similar to post-traumatic stress symptoms. of severalists components. the first component is a pattern

of hypervigilance to threat cues, so these children become very wary and very quick to respond to any kind of background threat or any kind of provocation. the second is is to show bias, where they attribute and cease threat even when it does not objectively exist, but they become very hypervigilant in response. component,other where their heart races in response to ambiguous threats. a fourth part is a testosterone release, which readies them for physical violent and physical reactivity, and the final component is a pattern of anger, hyper retaliatory aggression. now, not all children who experience these early adverse effects were up to have these outcomes. we all know about resilience and different kinds of outcomes. which the factors

determines which children will grow up to have these factors -- outcomes and which do not is genes. there is one that helps in self-regulation, a mono a mean -- a monoamine. risk ofe some at growing up violent in response to earlier experiences of abuse. and deborah temkin, growing up with bullying. first, i think it is important to define what we are talking about. bullying is not simply conflict or teasing or pushing and shoving on the playground. described, and abusive relationship between kids. there is some debate as to the precise definition, but the centers of disease control and prevention in 2014, they say

broadly that bullying is repeated aggressive behavior. this is in a context of power balance, and that could be anything with differences in size or strength or popularity -- and that behavior is repeated or has a potential to be repeated over time, and my story really illustrates each of these components, even though it is far from unique. a middle school student, i was perhaps a little bit geeky, perhaps a little bit today, butmaybe i am as in adolescence, when your acceptance is a key driver, seeing in any way different -- a keyeer acceptance is driver, being seen in any way different is an issue. i also transferred to a new school. if you asked me what i wedded to be when i grew up, i wanted to be a journalist, but, unfortunately, my new school did not have a newspaper, and a girl

quickly befriended me on my first day of school, and with our teacher, we started a newspaper, and once it was up and running, my teacher made me the editor over my friend, and that did not go over very well. kicked mesubsequently out of her lunch table, which, in my particular school, where there were limits to the number of kids who could sit at any particular lunch table, meant that i was so to speak homeless and didn't have a place to sit at lunch. campaign ofa bullying by this particular girl, as well as others to quickly joined in, seeing this was the cool thing to do, to pick on me. i experienced everything from nasty rumors being spread about me to being called derogatory names to even being spat upon from school bus windows. i was very lucky. we are hearing today about how such from can affect children's brains. will not overshadow.

i am definitely still affected by my experience. i will tell you right now, i still cannot go in a cafeteria and sit by myself, for fear that others are laughing at me or judging me, but i look at how pervasive this issue of bullying in this world, in this country, and know we have to do something about it. the u.s. department of education just released the newest statistics about bullying, which showed that in the 2014-2015 year, about 21% of kids reported being bullied, and that is quite a significant number of kids. when i look back at my experience, i've no longer blame the kids who actually bullied me. we know from the research that kids bullying for a number of reasons, but often, they are responding to draw a in their life, and they are also

responding to a climate -- they are responding to drama in their own life. back to the teachers and administrators in my school, who had no idea how to intervene and of to prevent violence bullying, which is why i really have dedicated my career to try to figure out how to equip schools to create safer and supportive environments. i was lucky to meet kevin shared my vision, or, shall i say, i shared his vision, of creating those supportive environments, and i soon it moved down to d.c. to tod the initiative from 2010 2012, where i was involved in heading a website, which remains one of the best resources were parents and educators around the prevention of bullying, and i also help to coordinate the white house intervention and other summits. i continue to work as a director

of education research at child trends, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the outcomes. trump asmelania expressed interest in bullying as her concern as first lady? that is right. she said cyber bullying is something she wants to take on. we know it is very related. that weng on the work have safer school environments is going to continue to be a very important issue carrying on through the next administration. michael, we see all of this, and we see the impacts. what is actually happening? what are the mechanics? mr. meaney: right. we see poverty on brain structure, and there is the obvious question of how this occurs, and there is a possibility that these forms of social adversity might be

affecting the activity of genes in the brain. eric referred early on to help it controls the opening and dnaing of chromatin, and methylation works with a silencing could we can think of this like a dimmer switch, so as lation works with the promoter, the gene becomes increasingly less active, so the higher the level of methylation, the less active, and the gene acquires epigenetic marks, so, for example, the epigenetic marks will be different for brain cells, which means the genes are different, and even aregh these cells

different, they take on very, very different functions. part, in fact,ng even within the same types of cells, these epigenetic marks can differ between one person and another, and i think this gives us -- the best example of this is we can look even at identical twins, who share exactly the same dna but who can be different, and what we know is as the twins age, they have different experiences. they produce differences in the epigenetic marks. fact, that is really the key point, is that the environment can actually produce subtle changes in the epigenetic marks. studying this by looking at the relationship between the quality of maternal care in a rat and a number of different outcomes, including the activity of genes, and what we found is if you look at the opt spring of what we referred as a "nurturing mother," who

look after there's well, this is associated with an increased glucocorticoid receptor in brain regions that regulate in theonse to stress, so offspring of these nurturing mothers are less reactive to stress. next, there is an interesting example of how these individual differences can be transmitted the next,eneration to so if you look at the female offspring of the nurturing mothers, they showed decreased lation in an estrogen gene. the female offspring of nurturing mothers actually than theeir pups more non-nurturing. this is with the epigenetic process.

know in this particular case, and this takes us to a ed, this isken rais their reaction between the parent and the offspring. if, for example, we chronically stressed a nurturing mother during her pregnancy, then once she gives birth, she shows a lower level of licking of her differencect, no with the non-nurturing mother, and that offspring does not differ from the non-nurturing offspring in their stress reactivity, and so this tells us that it is the behavior of the parent that is actually transmitting effect of the social condition on to the offspring, which is directly talkingto what ken was about with respect to poverty. now, we started to look at this in human situations. postmortem human

brains, and when we do, we find that individuals who were victims of child abuse show theeased methylation of lugo court record receptor gene, and they saw a decrease in the stress gene -- methylation of lucocorticoid receptor gene. kids who experience adversity are more reactive to threats and to stressors. this process, really regulated by the social environment -- and there was the example that eric mentioned early on. case, they showed modifications of the epigenetic marks that were directly passed on to their offspring. if it is a line, but is clearly a fascinating

possibility, so we think this process of epigenetic regulation through environmental influence is critical for two reasons. these marks,that including dna methylation in the human brain, associate with the risk for mental disorders, as brain issues.ter and i think the second point, and this is the point that underscores what ken talked about earlier, adversity that could modify the epigenetic marks and increase the risk for mental disorders -- far more prevalent than we think. in the united states, for example, about 20% to 40% of the population has experienced a level of social adversity that isn't sufficient to alter epigenetic marks and to change the risks for mental disorders level of social adversity that is sufficient to alter epigenetic marks. charlie: what does this be too?

what type of mark are we seeing question what you are seeing this in early life. -- what type of mark are we seeing? in earlyeeing this life. being pregnancy, it can associated with epigenetic modifications at birth, including epigenetic modifications of genes involved in brain develop it. and there is no doubt that this also occurs postnatal he -- postnatally, but at least it to understands us that these are being embedded very early on in life. >> one of the porton issues to one of the-- important issues to raise here, if we do not do something early in life, than the costs later on can snowball in many respects.

in fact, if i could just give one example of that, we started to look at a region of the lomeresome on the te region. older, weat as we get erode that region. it gets shorter. but what we have found is that children who grow up in her found neglect show a profoundly lomeresed rate of te changes for you can start to chip away at that, and the --pping away of that region and the question you will see in the next slide is how quickly do erosion, so you will see the children in the institution over her the first years of life show a reduction, and will he find is that seems to be associated with health outcomes. parents report kids with the greatest health issues are those telomeres, asest

well, every found if these children are removed from these deprived environments, generally at the age of two or so, we can reverse these. charlie: by the age of two? mr. nelson: by the age of two. it does not mean that the door shuts closed at two. you take them out of that deprived environment, the harder it is to get them back on an even keel the later you do that. here is one example. at the age oflook traits,serious form of children who are pretty

heartless. they torture animals. many people think it has its roots in attachment early in life, but more importantly,hear. children high in these traits when little may be more inclined likeds psychopathologies, being a psychopath when they are older, so what we see in red is how high these traits are in both boys and girls in the kids in the institutions, but it plummets when you put the kids into a good family. so this is an example of reversibility. if you leave them in those deprivedy environments, there is a high rate of kids exhibiting callous traits, and if you move them, you get rid of it almost completely. and then the window gets closed? mr. nelson: we do not know. does it matter, 3, 4, 5? we would still see some

recovery, but it would be harder to get those kids back on an even keel the longer you wait. there is probably no point that is too late, but just imagine trying to open a heavy door that is closed most of the way. brilliant work ,ocuses on extreme adversity orphanages, institutions, which, thankfully, that level of adversity is quite rare in the u.s., so we have reasons to hypothesize at least that reversibility -- it may persist a look at longer for situations of less extreme adversity, and there is also quite a bit of work suggesting brain plasticity at least through adolescence. rare.ndel: it is not that is found in other contexts, as well. so it is not just romania.

charlie, 60 point, one million children in china whose parents left them, and -- >> and another point, charlie, 61 million children in china whose parents left them. kids growing up in profound poverty, so we havthis continue when. -- we have this continuum. where do you cross this line before kids start suffering? ♪

we are talking about children and socioeconomic issues, exposure to environmental toxins, the effect on the brain. what is the right level? >> absolutely. that is a great question, charlie. thesey, we think of socioeconomic differences leading to these experiences, which, in turn, have effects on the brain and behavior, though what is the right level at which to intervene? do we choose through school interventions, for example? early childhood education is of paramount importance, but if we are waiting, we are likely waiting until deal only, because we know there are dramatic differences by the time children start kindergarten -- we are likely waiting too late, because we

know there are dramatic differences by the time children start kindergarten. talking about the importance of reading with their children. again, there is a number of interventions that are focused on parenting, many of which are quite effective, but they also face a number of challenges. they tend to be expensive. they tend to be difficult to scale up, and they often face challenges in terms of the effect of the intervention dwindling once the intervention is open. back furthertep and talking about changing policies that would actually directly reduce the rates of poverty in the u.s. or elsewhere , and so, with that kind of thinking, i have been very excited to be part of a team of social scientists and neuroscientists who are planning and raising funds for the first randomized clinical trial of poverty reduction, so while the premise is fairly ambitious or the goal is ambitious, it is actually pretty straightforward, so our plan is to recruit 1000

low income mothers nationally at the time they give birth, and then there is a large monthly income supplement, and the others would receive a moderate income monthly supplement, and others would receive that every month for the first three years of their children's lives, when we know that the developing brain is tremendously valuable .- malleable --t is the effect on poverty of poverty on brains, and this could be to policies that could influence and affect millions of dishes vantage children. -- millions of disadvantaged children. eric, can we localize this so we can see? the things ine of the findings is the hippocampus is reduced. of the findings that were

described here are based on various kinds of imaging. charlie: you can see the direct connection? and one of yes, yes, the amazing things, you take the taxi drivers of london. they really have to know their way around. the hippocampus is really important to spatial memory. charlie: they have bigger hippocampuses? theyandel: the longer drive, the larger the hippocampus gets, and when they quit, it shrinks. never quit. [laughter] charlie: you are speaking to the converted. dr. kandel: it is mutual. >> if i may though, this is entirely correlational. there are relations between economic disadvantage and areas of the brain, but we cannot say for sure what is causing what yet, so this randomized trial we

are doing will finally allow us to do that. poverty,lating reducing poverty, we can see if we can reverse or prevent some of this. what is fast? >> this is for children at higher chance of violence. keeping them from institutions. there are some having first experiences. with fast track, we work with children beginning at age five, to try to teach them skills to cope more effectively and to respond more competently when they are provoked and threatened. one of the things we do in fast-track is to use a stoplight as a way to have children learn these processes, so we paint red circles and yellow circles and green circles on playgrounds and desks, and what we do is we teach children, five euro children, rambunctious kindergartners -- five-year-old children, rambunctious kindergartners, that they should

slow down, stop, count to 10, take a deep breath, whatever it is to slow them down, and with these high risk kindergartners, if that is all we can teach them, it has been a success, but the next step is after they are calm to teach them to go to the yellow light, and the yellow light is a thinking life, where you think of new perspectives and solutions. was that person really trying to be mean to me? happen?pond, what will then when they come up with their best response, they come up to the green light to try it out, to go ahead, and if it works, great fruit if it does not, they go back to the red light and start over again -- and if it works, great, but if it does not, they go back to the red light and start over again. it is a period of five years, and we also teach parents get them too

intervene, and we intervened both with children and parents. we use the stoplight with parents so they may not abuse their children or engage in behaviors that they will regret later rocket we have conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate whether this kind of thing has impact. a thousand children from cities in the u.s. and intervened with them in the fast-track program and found several kinds of impacts. first, after five years, when the children are now 10 years of age instead of i've, those children who had been -- instead those children showed less defensive processing, less of that hypervigilance that i described earlier. is very encouraging. and the second finding is that we follow them up all of the way 25, wethood, and it age bring them back to the laboratory at expose them again -- and at age 25, we bring

them back to the laboratory and expose them again. have experienced this intervention, those children show less testosterone release. this means we have called them them-- we have calmed down. experienced the intervention showed at age 25, at age 26, they showed less psychiatric disorder and less anxiety, less a arrests, less time in prison, less costs -- time inests, less prison, less costs to society, so it is beneficial to intervene beginning at a young age. eric, the commitment we need in this nation to research. important studies taking place at every major university. help us understand why the way we are and how we can change

with early intervention -- it only comes about because of great researchat universities and facilities around the world. we are almost out of time. i like to do this. there with me. in terms of the future, and tell usg with you, kim, what you are looking at? ms. noble: how it can change children's brain development. charlie: the question we have been asking. >> i would like to figure out how to reverse these adverse effects, open up the critical periods, and see if we can get the brain back on it even keel. i think that is very exciting, because we now know something about the genetics to open it brain plasticity. >> i would like to go to a

question you raised early on, which is how is it some kids familiesn impoverished and are good and resilient? what is the origin? what makes these people so resistant to these forces? charlie: and what do you think we might find? that is interesting. it begins in the genes. charlie: it begins in vain genes . -- in the genes. mr. meaney: when you look at kids even raised in the same family, why it is that one him urges -- exactly as eric suggests, there is a mixture of genes that render this child more resilient. would like to look at population impact, taking the

science and interventions and to move the needle. scale, to move the needle, at scale, to full populations, so that we can transform our populations. tag alongm going to on that note to say i am interested in how education policy and policy in general can change the environment in schools and what we can do to help encourage schools to actually take on these issues. dr. kandel: it is so important for parents to realize how important their early interaction with their kids is. what parents to come away with the thought that the only ingredient for resilience is a child's genetic makeup. they can serve as a tremendous buffer. i completely agree. as you and others have shown

through parenting, but even in the same family, you see those examples, and even in good inilies, you see this, and impoverished families, the opposite. stunned with how we have studied it more, things we have not necessarily thought about as pivotal, deciding factors, with profound impact. absolutely. this whole program is astonishing in a way. how social factors can have dramatic effect on the structure of the brain is something i think we would not have thought about 40 or 50 years ago. to doe: what are we going next time? dr. kandel: , biology. to what degree is witness testimony reliable? it is a fascinating topic. willie: all of the lawyers be tuning in. i think we have learned a lot.

what it is that influences us becoming who we are. ♪

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