Editorial: In the Causal Labyrinth: Finding the Path From Early Trauma to Neurodevelopment

Abstract

Exposure to traumatic events early in life has been associated with significant adverse neurodevelopmental consequences.^1,2 Ideally, protecting children from trauma would prevent these consequences. Unfortunately, once a child is exposed to early trauma, the only means of prevention requires implementing effective interventions toward the mechanisms known to have caused the consequences. Therefore, it is imperative to carefully define the true mechanistic pathways from which the neurodevelopmental consequences of early trauma result. The process of determining the correct pathway(s) is not a trivial matter, as is made clear from a valiant effort reported in this issue of the Journal titled, "Early Sexual Trauma Exposure and Neural Response Inhibition in Adolescence and Young Adults: Trajectories of Frontal Theta Oscillations During a Go/No-Go Task."³ This editorial reviews the effort to infer causal mechanism in this article, and introduces a literature that can improve the field's capacity to infer causes from observational data.