By Nada Atieh, August 4, 2020, Record Searchlight.
When Kaiser Permanente and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the study to measure Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) levels in Shasta County in 2012, the results they found were striking.
The ACE study examined categories of childhood physical and emotional abuse and neglect. It measured household dysfunction — including domestic violence, mental illness and substance abuse — that create toxic stress leading to neuro-system changes during child development. 
Many of the students who were struggling with literacy were living in toxic stress conditions and persistent fear, Rizzi said, damaging their amygdala — the part of the brain that plays an important roles in the expression of emotion and behavior. That unrelenting stress can also shut off the learning and growth that takes place in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is linked to decision making and reasoning.
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