FLICKR, WOODLEYWONDERWORKSA number of studies indicate that stress experienced in very young animals or humans can have negative effects on mental and cognitive health that can later be passed on to offspring through epigenetic modification. But early-life stress in mice can also have positive effects that can be passed on to pups, according to a study published today (November 18) in Nature Communications. The pups of stressed male mice were behaviorally flexible, as shown by their ability to complete tasks that required waiting or adjusting their behavior over time. And these pups had altered modifications in their hippocampi to histones associated with the mineralocorticoid receptor gene, which is involved in stress response.
“People have shown many times that the negative effects of stress can be passed to the next generation,” said Deena Walker, a neuroscience postdoc at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City who was not involved in the research. “It’s interesting . . . that now we’re seeing some of those beneficial effects of stress being passed, as well.”
“The effect of trauma may be overall negative, but [it] may also provide some positive sides,” said study coauthor Isabelle Mansuy, a professor of neuroepigenetics at the University of Zürich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Mansuy and her colleagues subjected newborn mice to unpredictable maternal separation combined with unpredictable maternal stress (MSUS) for two weeks. MSUS entails taking away the pups’ mothers ...
