Intergenerational impacts of adversity on mind-body health – pathways through interoception and the gut-brain axis

Bridget Callaghan

Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, UCLA

Children’s early experiences with caregivers impact their mental and physical health across the lifespan. Such early caregiving experiences can become biologically and psychologically embedded within an individual, contributing to intergenerational transmission of adversity. My research program investigates the neurobiological mechanisms via which early caregiving experiences impact children’s mental and physical health, and how those experiences may be transmitted to impact future generations. I will present data from several studies demonstrating how early life adversity gets ‘under the skin’ to influence children’s emotional health and physical health, paying particular attention to gastrointestinal distress, which is tightly connected to emotional wellbeing. Zooming in on the gastrointestinal and oral microbiomes, I will show how adversity impacts biological systems tied to emotional and physical wellbeing. Finally, I will show that mind-body adaptations to the state of pregnancy, through changing interoception, may be one pathway through which experiences of adversity are perpetuated across generations.