Maternal perceptions and adolescent self-esteem: a six-year longitudinal study

A six-year longitudinal study investigated the development of self-esteem in relation to mother's child-rearing attitudes, role satisfaction, and perceived temperament of the child. Participants were two age cohorts of girls and boys from the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study, being 6 (n = 416) and 9 years old (n = 408) at the beginning of the study (baseline). Scores regarding mother's hostile child-rearing attitudes, mother's low role satisfaction, and maternal perceptions of child's difficult temperament (high activity, negative emotionality, and low cooperativeness) were obtained at baseline and three years later. Self-esteem was measured by self-reports six years later, at the ages of 12 and 15. The results indicated considerable gender differences. Among girls nearly all childhood variables individually predicted self-esteem, whereas among boys the associations were less evident. Additionally, perceived difficult temperament at baseline predicted hostile child-rearing attitudes at first follow-up, which further predicted low self-esteem among girls only.     

Hippocampus-dependent strategy choice predicts low levels of cell proliferation in the dentate gyrus

Neurogenesis continues to occur throughout life in the mammalian hippocampus. Previous research has suggested that the production of new neurons in the hippocampus during adulthood may be related to hippocampus-dependent learning and memory. However, the exact relationship between adult neurogenesis and learning and memory remains unclear. Here we investigated whether learning strategy selection is related to cell proliferation or to survival of new neurons in the hippocampus of adult male rats. We trained rats on alternating blocks of hippocampus-dependent (hidden platform) and hippocampus-independent (visible platform) versions of the Morris water task with the platform always in the same position. Following training, rats were given a probe session during which the platform was visible and in a novel location. Preferred strategy was determined by observing the initial swim path. Rats were classified as place strategy (hippocampus-dependent) users if they swam to the old platform location. Cue strategy (hippocampus-independent) users were classified as those rats that swam initially to the visible platform. Our results indicate that rats that preferentially used a place strategy had significantly lower cell proliferation than cue strategy users. However, there was no significant difference in cell survival or number of immature neurons between strategy user groups. These results suggest that low levels of cell proliferation in the dentate gyrus may be conducive or coincident with more efficient memory processing in the hippocampus.