Periodic Reporting for period 4 - COMSTAR (The effects of early-life adversity on cognition: A comparative approach.)
Période du rapport: 2020-04-01 au 2021-06-30
We were able to show, in the starlings, that different components of early-life adversity have different effects on different adult traits. That is, each trait is affected by different signatures in early experience; in at least some cases, rather than just saying individuals have had more or less adversity, you need to investigate exactly what experiences they have had. We also found some evidence that starlings (and maybe people) are sensitive to their own physiological conditions (as reflected in their phenotypic age or developmental telomere attrition), in setting their behaviour and cognition. We found clear evidence that early experience affects telomere dynamics, but much less evidence that adult experience continues to do so. In fact, telomere length through adulthood mainly just tracks on along the path mapped out in early life. Finally, we found abundant evidence for experience, including but not limited to early life experience, affecting fat storage and weight gain, not by making individuals consume more calories, but by making their metabolic expenditures different. This has important implications for human obesity and food insecurity.
In parallel to this bird work, we developed a novel approach to estimating phenotypic age from simple markers in humans, showing that phenotypic age was related to childhood socioeonomic adversity. We also investigated food insecurity and childhood socioeconomic position more broadly as factors explaining psychological and health outcomes in humans. We developed new approaches to measuring telomere dynamics in humans, and synthesized evidence that telomere length reflects stress and adversity in humans.
These and related findings were published in a series of open-access papers.
With the social foraging system, we were able to extend our knowledge of weight regulation in birds (but with relevance to human obesity) beyond the state of the art. This is mainly because the social foraging system gives us such clear and precise data that we are able to show clearly what there were already fragmentary hints of in the literature: that putting on more fat does not typically involve eating more calories, but, rather, changing energetic efficiency. This paper has been recommended on facultyopinions.com with the review 'This is a really elegant approach, and I expect that both the methods and results will provide inspiration for future work in this area.'
The human work presented presents a whole novel philosophical approach to understanding the consequences of poverty and deprivation for human behaviour. It went beyond the state of the art in the following ways: 1. It sets these impacts in the biological context of behavioural ecology, as well as their traditional social context; 2. It interprets decisions made under adversity as contextually appropriate active decisions, not deficits or pathologies; 3. It draws attention to the needs and potential health benefits of structural change, rather than superficial mitigating interventions. This work has been influential and generative in both social science and biological disciplines.