Schore: Attachment Neurobiology of Co-Regulation (UCLA, allanschore.com)
The brain develops self-regulation through thousands of co-regulated moments
Allan Schore's decades of work argue the right brain develops largely through dyadic relationship with the primary caregiver in the first two years. Co-regulation is the mechanism. When the loop is repeatedly broken, the brain wires for distress and dissociation rather than regulation.
Allan Schore is a neuropsychologist whose decades of work on attachment neurobiology argue that the right brain develops largely through the dyadic relationship with the primary caregiver in the first two years of life. The mechanism, in his account, is moment-to-moment co-regulation: the infant cries, the caregiver responds, the infant's arousal regulates, the caregiver mirrors the regulated state, and over thousands of repetitions, the infant's brain develops the architecture for self-regulation.
When that loop is repeatedly broken, as it is by extinction sleep training, the developing brain has to make do with the alternative. The alternative, in Schore's framework, is a developmental pattern where the right brain wires for distress and dissociation rather than regulation. The framework draws on neuroimaging, animal studies of separation, and clinical data on adult patients with regulation disorders.
First 2 yrs
Critical period for right brain
Dyadic
Relationship-dependent development
Thousands
Repetitions of co-regulation
Allan Schore
Primary researcher
Why it matters
If the brain develops its regulation systems through specific repeated experiences with the caregiver, then interrupting those experiences during the critical period is not a neutral choice. It is a developmental input the brain has to work around.
This is one finding from the research library behind How to Birth a Mother. Everything here traces back to a study, a dataset, or a systematic review.