Social Behavior: Developmental Timing Defies Puberty

Terrorism: behavior defies psychiatric diagnosis.

Puberty-timing is everything!

Puberty is a dynamic period of physical growth, sexual maturation, and psychosocial achievement that generally begins between age 8 and 14 years. The age of onset varies as a function of sex, ethnicity, health status, genetics, nutrition, and activity level. Puberty is initiated by hormonal changes triggered by the hypothalamus. Children with variants of normal pubertal development--both early ...

Social isolation during puberty affects female sexual behavior in mice

Exposure to stress during puberty can lead to long-term behavioral alterations in adult rodents coincident with sex steroid hormone-dependent brain remodeling and reorganization. Social isolation is a stress for social animals like mice, but little is known about the effects of such stress during adolescence on later reproductive behaviors. The present study examined sexual behavior of ovariect...

Timing of puberty by photoperiod.

Photoperiod cues play an important role in the timing of puberty in the female lamb. Removal and replacement of photoperiod cues by denervation of the pineal gland and timed melatonin infusions, respectively, indicate that the pathway for transmission of photoperiod information develops well before puberty. This is reinforced by manipulation of artificial photoperiods during various periods of ...

Developmental Timing of Trauma Exposure Relative to Puberty and the Nature of Psychopathology Among Adolescent Girls.

OBJECTIVE Increased neuroplasticity and neural development during puberty provide a context for which stress and trauma can have dramatic and long-lasting effects on psychological systems; therefore, this study was designed to determine whether exposure to potentially traumatic events during puberty uniquely predicts adolescent girls' psychopathology. Because neural substrates associated with d...