Effects of chronic stress on neuroplasticity of the adolescent brain: A systematic review

Abstract

This research focuses on the effect of stress on adolescent brain development. A systematic review study in nature, the quality standards of PRISMA-NMA method, excluding those specific to meta-analytic review studies, were considered. The Web of Science (WoS) database, an online scientific information service dependent on Clarivate Analytics, was selected for this research. The advantage of WoS is that it integrates several databases simultaneously. Due to its prestige, WoS Core Collection was mainly selected to refine the search and avoid duplication. The terms used when searching were Neural Plasticity AND adolescents AND stress, obtaining 323 articles. It is worth mentioning that WoS detects these terms in articles in different languages. By applying the “Core Collection” filter, articles decreased to 77. Then, for the above terms, a filter was applied to obtain only articles published in the last five years, with which a total number of 39 articles was obtained. As a result, 8 articles were obtained. Although the investigations that relate chronic stress with harmful effects on adolescent brain development are pretty recent, several carried out in animals, the articles analyzed permit us to conclude that chronic stress can generate significant harmful effects on adolescents’ brain development.