Chloe Schindler

Executive function, the higher-level cognitive skills necessary for countless tasks in daily life, are highly predictive of future success in a plethora of areas. Executive function is influenced by life experience, including early life stress, and is intertwined with the brain, particularly prefrontal cortex. One of the three components within executive function is cognitive flexibility, or shifting. Using early-life orphanage institutionalization as a type of emotional and physical neglect, we tested 212 participants ages 11-14 (151 previously institutionalized, 61 non-adopted controls) on three executive function tasks, one of which specifically measured cognitive flexibility via a set shifting task. Participants also underwent an MRI scan to obtain their prefrontal cortex total and subregion volumes. We examined whether adoption status (non-adopted or previously institutionalized) moderated the relationship between performance on the executive function task and the volumes of the prefrontal cortex and its subregions. We found that adoption status moderated the relationship between set shifting hard trial performance and the volumes of most prefrontal cortex regions, showing this relationship to be significant and positive within the non-adopted group but not significant within the previously institutionalized group. These findings further demonstrate the importance of early life experience, showing its impact on the relationship between executive function and brain.