Mothers and Epigenetics

There is an interesting article in Science this week on epigenetics and motherhood.

It States:

The importance of a loving mother

In 2004, Szyf and Meaney published a paper in Nature Neuroscience that helped launch the behavioral epigenetics revolution. It remains one of the most cited papers that journal has ever published. The paper built on more than a decade of research in Meaney's lab on rodent mothering styles.

Rat moms vary naturally in their nurturing tendencies. Some lick and groom their pups extensively and arch their backs to make it easier for their young to nurse. Others spend far less time doting on their pups in this way.

Meaney had found that the type of mothering a rat receives as a pup calibrates how its brain responds to stress throughout its life. Rats raised by less-nurturing mothers are more sensitive to stress when they grow up. When confined to a Plexiglas tube that restricts their movement, for example, they exhibit a greater surge in corticosterone, a hormone pumped out by the adrenal glands in times of stress. The likely cause is reduced numbers of a receptor for steroid hormones in the brain. This so-called glucocorticoid receptor is part of a negative feedback loop that dials down the volume on communication between the brain and adrenal glands, thereby reducing reactivity to stress.

Well it will be interesting to see how this carries over to humans.