In recent years, a growing wave of anxiety disorders has been documented among adolescents worldwide, particularly pronounced in developed nations such as the United States. While global crises and acute stressors like the COVID-19 pandemic have been considered as potential catalysts, emerging research suggests these events alone cannot account for the pervasive increase in anxiety prevalence observed. Instead, a complex interplay of early-life environmental factors, neural development trajectories, and societal transformations appears to underpin this unsettling trend. In their compelling Perspective published in Science, Mark Hanson and Peter Gluckman delve into these multifaceted determinants, elucidating how conditions as early as the prenatal period can cast long shadows on children’s emotional and executive function development, setting some on pathways toward anxiety disorders during adolescent years.
The human brain’s developmental plasticity is most pronounced during the earliest stages of life. Hanson’s and Gluckman’s synthesis highlights how maternal stress, caregiving quality, and overarching environmental cues act as critical regulators of neurodevelopment. The prenatal and early postnatal environments embed biological signals that shape neurocognitive architectures responsible for executive functioning—such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control—as well as emotional regulation frameworks. These systems are essential to adaptive responses in a complex and dynamic social landscape. When early environmental stressors program heightened vigilance and reactivity, ostensibly to prepare the child for anticipated adversity, this neurodevelopmental tuning can become maladaptive if the child’s postnatal environment does not align with such expectations, creating what researchers call an "environmental mismatch."
From a mechanistic vantage point, maternal stress induces alterations in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function, with downstream effects on glucocorticoid exposure to the developing fetal brain. Elevated prenatal glucocorticoids have been implicated in disrupting the maturation of limbic structures, including the amygdala and hippocampus, which are central to emotional processing and memory formation. Hanson and Gluckman underscore that these neuroendocrine perturbations, combined with suboptimal caregiving environments post-birth, potentiate vulnerabilities in the child’s executive networks situated in the prefrontal cortex. These disruptions hinder the child’s ability to regulate negative affect and manage stressors effectively, creating the neurobiological groundwork for anxiety disorders that often manifest during adolescence.
Adolescence itself is a critical window characterized by extensive neurodevelopmental remodeling. The prefrontal cortex undergoes synaptic pruning and myelination refinements, processes that optimize cognitive control and decision-making capabilities. However, early-life programmed sensitivity of emotional circuits, coupled with the onslaught of rapid social and technological changes in the modern era, exacerbates the risk ratio for psychopathology. Hanson and Gluckman posit that this developmental epoch not only reveals latent vulnerabilities seeded in early childhood but also interacts dynamically with environmental stressors—ranging from social media exposure to academic pressures—to amplify anxiety symptomatology.
Importantly, emerging longitudinal studies corroborate the substantial role of caregiving quality in modulating these developmental trajectories. Warm, responsive caregiving can mitigate the biological embedding of early stress exposure, fostering resilience through supportive social interactions that recalibrate stress response systems. Conversely, neglectful or inconsistent caregiving environments exacerbate dysregulation of executive and affective brain networks. This bidirectional influence emphasizes the actionable potential of early interventions targeting parents and caregivers as a buffer against the neurodevelopmental risk factors for adolescent anxiety.
The broader societal implications of these findings are profound. Hanson and Gluckman urge for a paradigm shift in mental health approaches—from predominantly reactive treatment frameworks to proactive, preventative strategies grounded in a lifecourse perspective. This approach recognizes that mental health challenges, particularly anxiety disorders, are not merely symptomatic episodes but rather outcomes of a cumulative developmental process initiated before birth. Coordinated policies integrating health, education, and social welfare sectors stand to substantially improve outcomes by emphasizing early childhood support, maternal health, and parental education.
Equally provocative is the authors’ consideration of the "predictive adaptive responses" concept in developmental biology. According to this hypothesis, early environmental cues induce phenotypic adaptations that anticipate future environmental conditions. While evolutionarily advantageous in stable or predictably adverse contexts, the misalignment between prenatal programming and subsequent environments—such as the unprecedented rapidity of technological change and shifting social expectations in the 21st century—renders such adaptations dysfunctional, manifesting clinically as anxiety disorders. This perspective reframes anxiety not simply as pathology but as maladaptive over-activation of adaptive neurodevelopmental mechanisms.
Furthermore, the integration of epigenetic research offers fertile ground for understanding these processes at the molecular level. Stress-exposure during gestation influences DNA methylation and histone modification patterns governing gene expression within the brain. These epigenetic modifications may induce long-lasting changes in neural circuitry involved in emotional regulation and executive function, with potential transgenerational implications. Hanson and Gluckman highlight the necessity of bridging neurobiological, psychological, and social research domains to fully elucidate these complex interactions.
In light of these findings, the authors emphasize the urgency of designing public health interventions that operate at multiple levels. Targeting societal inequalities that exacerbate stress in vulnerable populations, enhancing prenatal care programs to monitor and reduce maternal stress, and fostering nurturing caregiving environments emerge as foundational pillars. Such multifactorial approaches demand robust political will, substantial resource allocation, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Moreover, technological innovation offers a dual-edged sword in this context. While digital tools and platforms may amplify stress and social comparison among youth, they also present unprecedented opportunities for scalable mental health interventions, remote counseling, and resilience-building programs. Evidence-based integration of technology into preventative mental health frameworks could attenuate some of the adverse impacts of contemporary social dynamics on adolescent anxiety trajectories.
Ultimately, Hanson and Gluckman’s Perspective constitutes a clarion call to the scientific community, policymakers, and society at large to reconceptualize adolescent anxiety disorders within a comprehensive developmental and environmental framework. Such reframing mandates moving beyond symptom management toward upstream interventions that address the underlying neurodevelopmental mechanisms seeded in early life. Embracing a lifecourse perspective, as they argue, holds the key to curbing the burgeoning mental health crisis among young populations and fostering adaptive neurodevelopment in a rapidly evolving world.
Subject of Research: The influence of early-life environmental conditions, maternal stress, and caregiving quality on the neurodevelopment of executive functions and emotional regulation, and their relationship to the emergence of anxiety disorders in adolescents.
Article Title: Growing anxious–Are preschoolers matched to their futures?
News Publication Date: 29-May-2025
Web References: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.adp3764
Keywords: adolescent anxiety, early neurodevelopment, maternal stress, executive function, emotional regulation, HPA axis, epigenetics, neuroplasticity, developmental mismatch, mental health prevention, lifecourse perspective, caregiving quality
