For half a century, Seymour Levine's pioneering work on the interactions between mother
and infant have helped us understand the critical early factors that shape physiology and …

Optimal early development in most species is dependent upon a stable relationship
between the mother and her infant. The research described here focuses on the reciprocal …

Advances in neuroendocrinology have provided new avenues for examining how caregiving
interventions such as mother-infant interactions and touch massage strategies best support …

The neonatal nutritional environment is critical for programming the systems regulating body
weight, and an inappropriate nutritional environment in early life can lead to overweight or …

Animal studies demonstrate that maternal touch and contact regulate infant stress, and
handling during periods of maternal deprivation attenuates the stress response. To measure …

Early preterm neonates in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) are subjected to
repeated painful procedures which could sensitize their responses to pain and potentiate …

Animal studies find that prenatal stress is associated with increased physiological and
emotional reactivity later in life, mediated via fetal programming of the HPA axis through …

Behavioral–pharmacological research in infant rats supports the role of cholecystokinin
(CCK) and opioid peptides in mediating early learning of new associations with aspects of …

This article reviews 30 years of work demonstrating that interactions between mother and
newborn infant in the period just after birth influence the physiology and behavior of both …

Both basic and clinical research support the use of tactile stimulation to rescue several
neurobiobehavioral consequences that follow early life stress. Here, using a translational …