Early-life stress leaves a 'scar' inside brain cells, mouse study finds
A mouse study from Washington University School of Medicine and Princeton University found that early-life stress alters DNA packaging in dopamine neurons, leaving a lasting 'scar' that increases vulnerability to stress later in life. The study, published Aug. 7 in Neuron, identified an enzyme called SETD7 that marks DNA for uncoiling, making stress-response genes more easily activated. Blocking SETD7 after early-life stress prevented hypersensitivity to later stress, suggesting a potential target for treatments.
We have uncovered a new biological process linking experience of early-life adversity to this long-term vulnerability to mental illness.
- redrix
I remember having it drilled into me in High School that unless you did well on your finals:
1. You wouldn’t get the score you needed to get into a good University and/or accepted into the course you wanted.
2. If you didn’t get into that course, you wouldn’t be able to do <x> for a career.
3. If you DID get into the course you wanted, it needed to be at a top University (which of course required an even higher entry score) or else you’d find it hard to get a job afterwards.
Imagine all of that stress: Telling 16-18 year olds that unless you ace your tests, you won’t be able to do what you want to in life.
- ls612
In mice.
- sph
These pop-sci articles annoy me greatly. All I can think reading the title is “well, duh?” - they’re a complete tautology.
Let me explain: if an event or behaviour affects a person, it means that there must be a physical record of it. These types of articles confirming that such a record has been found might be great news for researchers, but for everyone else, the existence of this physical record was already known a priori. We are biological machines after all, all behaviours are encoded physically.
If there was no such scar in brain cells, there would have been no early-life stress.
This applies to other research such as “learning changes structure of the brain” or “drug addiction turns off specific neural pathways” or “brains of children with autism differ from neurotypical brains” or “athletes have more developed muscles”