Halting Legacies of Trauma
there was my three-year-old son
crying inconsolably in the center isle
of grocery store
why you say all because his uncaring
father would not yield to his demand
to get him that shiny bottle of
champagne that he had seen two aisles
over
eager to end this cliched father-son
matinee i yelled
be quiet on no cuddles and stories
tonight
while these words do not rise to the
level of the atrocities that i will be
talking to you about
no sooner had they left my mouth like a
quiver of arrows intended to hurt their
prey did i remember
that legacies of trauma of neglect
and of abuse can and do
echo across generations
historical events data collected in the
aftermath of those events
and contemporary biology are providing
evidence that legacies of trauma
are deep they take root in the
population that is directly exposed to
the trauma
burdening not only the ancestral
generation
but also descendants
romanian children who were orphaned at
the fall of the
regime in 1989 some of them were placed
in institutionalized care
and in this institutionalized care there
were abysmal
social conditions overcrowded
and very little care bestowed upon these
children
studies on these children have shown
that maltreatment
stunted growth it derailed the
development of neural circuits in the
brain
and resulted in a whole host of
emotional disorders
exposure to the atrocities of the
holocaust
have burdened survivors of the holocaust
with visible and invisible scars
of trauma scars that include but are not
limited to
an increased incidence of post-traumatic
stress disorder
and anxiety
now if this burden was not grave enough
as is
we are now appreciating that children
of holocaust survivors even though they
did not
experience the holocaust directly
themselves
also present with a higher incidence of
ptsd
and anxiety-related disorders
and finally one of the most commonly
discussed examples of legacies of trauma
reverberating across generations
comes to us from world war ii
during the dutch hunger winter when food
was not allowed to go into the
netherlands
caloric consumption plummeted to about
400 calories a day
people resorted to eating grass and
tulip bulbs
children who were in neutral at the time
that their mothers experienced this
dutch hunger winter
developed cardiovascular disease obesity
diabetes and a higher incidence of
schizophrenia
again if this burden of trauma were not
grave enough as
is grandchildren who were not even
conceived at the time of the dutch
hunger winter
also presented with a higher incidence
of cardiovascular disease
diabetes and obesity
legacies of trauma legacies of stress
can and do echo across generations
how might this happen remember the story
i started my talk with
the one about my less than stellar
parenting
you can imagine how exposure to
atrocities like i’ve talked to you about
result in feelings of guilt of shame of
anger of despair or frustration and
those manifest themselves
in conversations across dinner tables
worldwide
or in the parental behavior that we
bestow upon our children
social transmission is one way by which
legacies of trauma
reverberate across generations
and mechanistic evidence for how
legacies of trauma
reverberate via social transmission come
to us
from studies of maternal behavior in
rats
rat mothers just like human ones will
exhibit
maternal behavior on a spectrum some rat
mothers will provide
high quality maternal care while other
ad mothers will provide
low quality maternal care except in the
wrath world
we call it high licking grooming arch
back nursing
and low licking grooming archback
nursing
what we now know is that pups that are
raised
with high quality maternal care go on to
become
well adjusted and less reactive to
stress
whereas pups that are raised by mothers
providing
low quality care go on to become more
reactive to stress
and more anxious and what is
fascinating is that if a pup
experienced high quality maternal care
it goes on to provide high quality
maternal care
to its own offspring and if a pup
was the recipient of low quality
maternal care
it goes on to provide low quality
maternal care
to its own offspring so social
transmission
is one way by which legacies of trauma
can echo across generations
and that might seem intuitive to you
what i also want to emphasize is that we
are now gaining
a novel biological perspective
on another way by which legacies of
trauma can reverberate
sperm and egg may bear imprints
of trauma let me repeat that
sperm and egg may bear imprints of
trauma
how do we know this there are many many
studies that are showing this
using animal models and i’d like to
share one of those studies that we’ve
been pursuing in my laboratory over the
past few years
we train male mice to become fearful of
a particular smell
we then take the sperm of these male
mice and perform in vitro fertilization
and even in the absence of any
traditional mating which would allow for
social transmission of information
now the offspring that are the results
of this in vitro fertilization
are most sensitive to the smell and
their brains have more cells
more neurons that process the smell
even though these offspring had no prior
exposure
to this particular smell and what we
find is that the sperm of these male
mice that we had been made
fearful of this particular smell
register
this stressful experience studies like
this
have been shown to occur in rats
flies worms and now are permeating into
the human literature as well
so there you have it two main mechanisms
social transmission and biological
inheritance
by which legacies of stress
perpetuate across generations but how do
they
do this they do this by becoming
embedded
under our skin they do this
by taking root in our biology
in our dna in our book of life
dna the set of instructions that
makes you and i edit this book of life
edit these instructions in this book of
life differently
and the message gleaned will be very
different
take for example this set of
instructions
on this billboard with a rather
frightening message
but edit that message with a
strategically placed
full stop and a much needed one and that
message takes on
a completely different meaning
embedded within you and i are molecules
called readers writers and erasers
and what these molecules do is they put
the equivalent of full stops
commas highlights white outs
on our books of life allowing for that
book of life to be read differently
and some of these punctuations take the
form of
metal marks that are put on dna called
dna methylation
they take the form of marks put on
histone proteins
which are proteins around which the dna
is wound
on our chromosomes and they take the
form of met off marks which are put on
rna
that allows the message read from these
books of life
to be extremely different
epigenetics is the phenomenon that
allows for
environmental events to edit the book of
life
take root in our dna become embedded
under our skin
and allow for legacies of stress to
perpetuate across generations
so here you have a ball at the top of a
hill
on we what we call waddington’s
landscape
this ball could be considered to be a
cell in your brain or a cell in the
brain of a rat
if that cell saw high quality maternal
care
maybe it rolls down the right hand side
of this hill
and you get an animal that is less
responsive to stress
well adjusted but if that same cell
so low quality maternal care it rolls
down another side of the hill
and now you have an animal that is more
responsive to stress
and more anxious or you can go one step
further back you can think of this ball
as an embryo formed after the fusion of
sperm and egg
ripe with the potential to make the
multi-cellular
you and i
but which uni develops
the embryo that sees ancestral strife
and rolls down one side of the hill and
goes down a downward spiral of substance
abuse and ptsd
or the embryo that sees ancestral
serenity
and loving caring environments and rolls
down the other side of the hill
and develops into an individual that is
protected from that downward spiral
of substance abuse and ptsd
thus far i’ve talked to you about
legacies of
trauma existing across generations
social transmission and biological
inheritance being ways
by which these legacies of trauma echo
across generations
using epigenetic methodology
so thus far all i’ve talked to you about
is gloom and doom
but might there be a silver lining and
i’m here to share with you that there is
a silver lining
the die is not cast
just as a book can be edited
so also it can be re-edited
and in this re-editing legacies of
trauma
can be halted they can be prevented
they can be reversed
let’s go back to that example of the
romanian children orphanages
what we now know is that if some of
those children escaped
institutionalized care and were instead
fostered in loving caring families
the stunted growth the derailment of
neuronal
circuits in the brain and the emotional
disorders abated
we know that if a rat pup that is born
to a mother
who would normally provide low quality
maternal care
is now instead fostered by a mother that
actually provides
high quality care that rat pup that was
destined
to become more responsive to stress more
anxious
actually becomes less responsive to
stress and well adjusted
and finally in our own work we were able
to show
that if you we took these animals these
male mice
who had been made fearful of a
particular odor and
extinguished their fear to that odor we
were able to reverse
the sensitivity of the offspring to that
smell
reverse the fact that those offspring
now had more cells or neurons
that process that smell and remarkably
we also found that this intervention
registered in the sperm of the animals
that was subjected to this particular
intervention
now you may be saying to yourself
all this is fine and dandy but i can’t
go out and be a foster parent
neither am i a rat mom nor am i a male
mouse
so what can i actually do
so here’s the call to action for myself
and for you
let’s build legacies of empathy of
kindness and of compassion
first for ourselves then our family and
friends
and finally our communities
and i’m not talking about empathy
kindness and compassion as esoteric
terms
they might be taking a walk in nature
every single day
seeing a therapist routinely they might
be
eating a healthy balanced diet engaging
in yoga and meditation routinely
they might be picking up that phone and
calling someone who we know
is having a tough time every single day
why am i advocating for legacies of
empathy kindness
and compassion to halt legacies of
trauma
because just as our biologists can
accrue
marx associated with negative
experiences
so also our biologies must be able to
accrue marks
associated with positive experiences
now some of you might be saying but
brian there’s a lot of trauma in this
world
i can’t possibly contribute
i’m just an insignificant
person and there’s a lot of trauma
so i want to leave you with words from
some people’s favorite philosopher
other people spiritual leader and
teacher his holiness the dalai lama
who said if you think you’re too small
to make a difference
try sleeping with a mosquito
let’s be mosquitos of empathy
of kindness and of compassion
i am enough you are enough
and we are enough let’s edit
our books of life the books of life of
our family and friends
and the books of life of our communities
with empathy
kindness and compassion thank you