title: Influence of parental care on offspring hippocampal volume in young adults varies as a function of overprotection.
abstract: Parental care results in increased hippocampal volumes through adaptive stress responses in developing animals. However, human studies have not yet provided consistent findings analogous to the animal literature, possibly because parental care in humans is likely intermingled with parental overprotection, as suggested by the optimal parenting theory. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the effect of parental care on offspring hippocampal volume varies as a function of parental overprotection with a large cohort of young adult participants (N = 257). Consistent with some previous human studies, we found that parental care in childhood alone had little association with the hippocampal volume in adulthood. However, when parental overprotection was low, parental care was positively correlated with offspring hippocampal volume, whereas there was no association between parental care and offspring hippocampal volume when parental overprotection was high. Thus, an interaction exists between parental care and overprotection in human's hippocampal development, which contributes to the elucidation of the complex relationship between brain structure and environmental factors.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yinan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning &IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Yiying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xueting
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Civil Aviation Medical Center, Civil Aviation Administration of China, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009769:Object Attachment; D009929:Organ Size / Q000502:physiology; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting; D055815:Young Adult