Can Neuroscience Help Institutionalized Children?
It was 1989 when the Ceauşescu regime fell in Romania, and subsequently Nicolae Ceauşescu was executed. Following this event, the news that 170, 000 children had been raised in Romanian state-run institutions went around the world. Ceauşescu’s policies had promoted such high numbers of institutionalized children.
These children were deprived of stimulation, responsive care, and social interaction. The orphans did not have access to adequate clothing, medical care, nutrition, and shelter. Ultimately, children were neglected. Neglect causes “cognitive delays, increased risk for psychological disorders, and stunted physical growth,” according to experts.
For that reason, in 2000 the Bucharest Early Intervention Project started to study the effects of deprivation in infants in Romanian orphanages. A team consisting of a cognitive neuroscientist, a developmental psychologist, and a psychiatrist led research.
Actually, the resulting findings of this project may help inform policies based on scientific evidence to improve orphans’ lives around the world.
In 2015 there were “140 million children in need of a new family, shelter, or care.” They have lost one or both parents so they were orphans according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Let’s see how scientists developed such a project with institutionalized children in Romania in mind. And how the results have motivated local and international policies.
Institutionalized Romanian Children’s Cases
1. Participants
Who participated in the study? 136 children, who were abandoned in their first weeks or months of life, participated in the study.
Hence, they grew up in state-run institutions.
In this case, conditions surrounding the children were an example of extreme environment exposure and early deprivation, in agreement with the research team who published his findings at Trends in Cognitive Sciences magazine.
What was the objective of this study? Scientists studied the impact of social intervention in the brain of these children. Notably the findings can guide governments to develop better care for parentless children.
What was such intervention about? Researchers moved some of the participating children from institutionalized care to foster care, which offered higher quality care.
How were the kids assigned to foster care? Researchers randomly split the 136 kids into two groups. The first group stayed in the institution where they grew up. They then put the second group under foster care. At that time, kids were anywhere from six to thirty-one months old.
Additionally, another 72 children participated, but they never were institutionalized.
Researchers studied the brain development of all those kids for twelve years. Next let’s see what researchers measured to follow the brain’s development.
2. Brain Development Indicators
In total 208 children participated in the study, 68 of them remained in the governmental institution, another 68 were moved from institutionalized to adoptive care, while the rest were never institutionalized. Scientists then studied the brain and the biological development in all these children.
You may be thinking, how researchers could follow the brain development of those kids. Well, they measured some brain development indicators. Specifically, they measured the intelligence quotient (IQ), their social and emotional functioning, as well as their language development.
What technology did scientist use to measure brain development indicators?
Neuroscience uses technology such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure brain electrical activity. And it can detect abnormal activity as well. It also uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This is an imaging technique that can produce images of tissues and organs in the body, including the brain.
Thus, EEG’s and MRI’s measurements supplied data to infer the volume of white and grey matter in the children’s brains.
In the case of children moved from state-care to foster, researchers made those measurements before and after moving them.
3. Results
The group of institutionalized children
The results showed that children that stayed institutionalized lowered their IQ through time, as well as their language, social, and emotional abilities. Likewise the brain activity registered through EEG, as well as the volume of white and grey matter, reduced compared to the rest of the kids.
The group of kids assigned to foster care
After moving the kids to foster care they enhanced their social, emotional, language, and cognitive functioning, as well as their EEG activity. However, the proportion of kids with attention deficit disorder did not improve. Among the 136 participants initially institutionalized, there was already a high number of children with this disorder.
The sensitive period for improvement
EEG measurements showed that kids removed from institutional care recovered from early deprivation. For instance, they had a bigger increase in brain activity. Notably, it happened in kids removed before being two years old. Alternatively, kids removed after this age did not improve as much as their peers removed earlier.
4. Governmental Intervention
After announcing those findings to the Romanian government, it implemented new policies regarding institutionalized children. As a result, there was a reduction in the number of children living in such institutions. Furthermore, the government increased foster care.
At the international level, UNICEF has used these findings as a reference to urge governments to “develop alternatives to institutional care for orphaned or abandoned children,” as reported by the research team.
5. Take Away
Findings to inform policies
The study showed that deprivation conditions led to a decrease in the brain development in institutionalized Romanian children. Furthermore, the findings indicated that there is a sensitive age of the brain in which it is more likely to recover from a deprivation period.
Thus, this technology is able to recognize a time window in which the implementation of social intervention can be more effective. Therefore, it has the potential to inform decision makers in the development of policies.
Children’s conditions
It is important to note that changes in the children’s brains related to adversity can be reversible with appropriate social intervention.
It is also important to not stigmatize children and their capacities because of their life conditions.
The study’s limitations
The small sample size limited the conclusion of this study, according to the authors. However, it establishes an important precedent. Moreover, additional studies are necessary to expand the understanding of brain development under adverse conditions.
To date, institutionalized care systems are diverse around the world, even within the same country. Here we talked about a specific scheme in which children did not benefit from it. However, there are similar systems globally. Thus, the findings discussed here can apply to comparable scenarios.
Finally, the study of a social problem from an exclusive neuroscience’s perspective can contribute in understanding its complexity, but not its entirety. Other social and neuroscience studies are necessary to understand such intricacy. Besides it is necessary to consider concepts of equity, equality, and justice to develop policies in this field.
