Impact of stress on excitatory and inhibitory markers of adolescent cognitive critical period plasticity.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review and theoretical framework synthesizing animal and human literature
PubMed 37643681 · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105378
What was done
The authors conducted a narrative review synthesizing human and animal research examining how acute and chronic stress during adolescence affects prefrontal cortex excitatory and inhibitory neural mechanisms of critical period plasticity and executive cognitive function.
What was found
The abstract reports no quantitative values or statistical effect sizes. Qualitatively, the synthesized literature indicates that acute stress can exert enhancing effects on cognition and neural excitation in certain contexts, whereas chronic stress generally dampens both excitatory and inhibitory prefrontal processes and impairs cognition. Based on these findings, the authors proposed a mechanistic model of stress-induced disruption of frontal critical period plasticity.
Why it matters
This framework clarifies how environmental stressors during the sensitive developmental window of adolescence might disrupt prefrontal excitatory/inhibitory balance and alter neurodevelopmental trajectories toward psychopathology.
Limits
The abstract describes a narrative rather than a systematic review and omits search methodology, study counts, and quantitative metrics. Inherent limitations include the difficulty of translating mechanistic synaptic findings from animal critical-period models directly to human adolescent cognitive outcomes.
Cited by
- supports The human brain is hyperplastic during early developmental and youth stages.