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Homeorhesis: envisaging the logic of life trajectories in molecular research on trauma and its effects

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Abstract

What sets someone on a life trajectory? This question is at the heart of studies of 21st-century neurosciences that build on scientific models developed over the last 150 years that attempt to link psychopathology risk and human development. Historically, this research has documented persistent effects of singular, negative life experiences on people’s subsequent development. More recently, studies have documented neuromolecular effects of early life adversity on life trajectories, resulting in models that frame lives as disproportionately affected by early negative experiences. This view is dominant, despite little evidence of the stability of the presumably early-developed molecular traits and their potential effects on phenotypes. We argue that in the context of gaps in knowledge and the need for scientists to reason across molecular and phenotypic scales, as well as time spans that can extend beyond an individual’s life, specific interpretative frameworks shape the ways in which individual scientific findings are assessed. In the process, scientific reasoning oscillates between understandings of cellular homeostasis and organisms’ homeorhesis, or life trajectory. Biologist and historian François Jacob described this framework as the “attitude” that researchers bring to bear on their “objects” of study. Through an analysis of, first, historical and contemporary scientific literature and then ethnographic research with neuroscientists, we consider how early life trauma came to be associated with specific psychological and neurobiological effects grounded in understandings of life trajectories. We conclude with a consideration of the conceptual, ontological, and ethical implications of interpreting life trajectories as the result of the persistence of long-embodied biological traits, persistent life environments, or both.

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Notes

  1. All translations of Jacob taken from Jacob, 1973. Translations of Méthot are our own.

  2. More recently, some of these studies have sought to identify the molecular substrates associated with these processes and their possible correlation with conditions ranging from elevated risk of disease to specific behavioural traits and types of mental illness.

  3. The term chreode, or chreod, was coined by Waddington Greek roots for “necessary” and “path” (Humphrey, 2019).

  4. Other epigenetic processes are likely altered by early life adversity but are less studied and not considered here (see Barnett Burns et al., 2018 for a review).

  5. See research on the effects of early adversity on retrotransposons and shifts in the linear sequence of DNA in neurons (Breuss et al., 2020).

  6. Investigations of groups of resilient subjects, exposed to ELA without any psychopathological impact, have not been conducted to date.

  7. By “superficial” we mean that they may not be familiar with the original texts of the people who proposed these classic theories or the experimental systems in which they grounded their research.

  8. We have included part of the original French text as the translation shifted the meaning to some extent.

  9. Similar notions, which are often grouped under the rubric of meta-plasticity, are currently being formulated, tested, and to some extent documented in experimental settings (Baker-Andresen et al., 2013).

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Project Grant (166036) “Situating suicide risk: An inquiry into the production of the lives and afterlives of neurobiological vulnerability” (A.L., S.L.), by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France), the ‘Université de Strasbourg’, the French National Research Agency [ANR-18-CE37-0002-03] (P.-E.L., ), [ANR-19-CE37-0010] (P.E.L.), the ‘Fondation de France’ [N° Engt: 00081244] (P.-E.L.), the ‘Fondation pour la Recherche sur le Cerveau’ (FRC 2019, P.-E.L.), and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP YIG-1-102-19, P.-E.L.). We would also like to thank Samuel Duchesne and Chani Bonventre for their contributions to the preparation of this text.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada

    Stephanie Lloyd & Alexandre Larivée

  2. Douglas Mental Health University Institute, McGill University, Montréal, Canada

    Pierre-Eric Lutz

  3. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Fédération de Médecine Translationnelle de Strasbourg, Institut des Neurosciences Cellulaires et Intégratives UPR3212, Université de Strasbourg, 67000, Strasbourg, France

    Pierre-Eric Lutz

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Lloyd, S., Larivée, A. & Lutz, PE. Homeorhesis: envisaging the logic of life trajectories in molecular research on trauma and its effects. HPLS 44, 65 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-022-00542-7

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