The Affect-Hungry Child: Friendliness and Amygdala Are Indiscriminate

Barbara Geller, MD

Indiscriminate hugging and clinging to strangers and aberrant amygdala activity are seen in institutionalized children, even after adoption.

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 questionnaires, including one on their children's friendliness.

Differences in amygdala activity while children viewed pictures of mothers versus strangers were significantly greater in controls than in adopted participants. Later adoption and higher indiscriminate friendliness ratings were each associated with less amygdala differentiation between mothers and strangers.

Citation(s):

Olsavsky AK et al. Indiscriminate amygdala response to mothers and strangers after early maternal deprivation. Biol Psychiatry 2013 Jun 27; [e-pub ahead of print].