Is neglect the first form of threat?

Maternal childhood maltreatment is associated with child psychopathology in the next generation. One mechanism proposed to underly this intergenerational transmission is alterations in infant stress systems, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and limbic brain regions. McLaughlin and colleagues have shown that direct experiences of threat versus deprivation have different effects on brain development and need to be studied separately. However, human and animal studies generate contrasting predictions about how threat versus deprivation experiences might affect stress systems in infancy. The current paper reviews emerging findings from the Mother-Infant Neurobiological Development (MIND) Study regarding the intergenerational transmission of effects of threat versus deprivation and proposes a Developmental Salience Model of Threat to integrate findings in human and animal literatures. This model proposes that threat of lack of care poses the first survival threat across species and therefore is more salient than threat of attack for stress-sensitive brain regions in infancy.