Loading...
In 1937, David Levy described the “affect hunger” of deprived children (Am J Psychiatry 1937; 94:643), which is often manifested by the child's indiscriminate hugging and clinging to strangers, such as new doctors or nurses. Because the amygdala develops aberrantly in deprived children and animal studies have shown that the amygdala represents preference for the maternal caregiver, investigators studied how this “indiscriminate friendliness” modulates amygdala pathways.
The participants — 33 previously institutionalized, adopted children (mean age, 10) and 34 typically developing controls (mean age, 11) — underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while they viewed photographs of their mothers and strangers. Parents completed questionna…