Background: Maternal care refers to the behavior performed by the dam to nourish and
protect her litter during its early development. Frequent and high-quality performance of …

Early life adversity is a known risk factor for mood and anxiety disorders in adult humans
(Heim et al., 2010; Huh et al., 2014; Rehan et al., 2017). Given the prevalence of both …

Reduced hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) responses to stress during the last week of
pregnancy and lactation have been consistently observed in rat studies. Several contributing …

BACKGROUND: Early-life emotional stress may be associated with affective and cognitive
disorders later in life, yet satisfactory animal models for studying the underlying mechanisms …

BACKGROUND: Epidemiological studies suggest that environmental adversity can alter
parental care and thus influence child development. We addressed the question of whether …

Maternal mood disorders such as depression and chronic anxiety can negatively affect the
lives of both mothers and their adult offspring. An active focus of maternal depression and …

Gestational stress (GS) produces profound behavioural impairments in the offspring and
may permanently programme hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis function. We …

Maternal separation (MS) is a widely-used paradigm to study the effect of early-life adversity
on brain development and resilience to psychopathology. Most of the related literature …

Early life stress (ELS) developmental effects have been widely studied by preclinical
researchers. Despite the growing body of evidence from ELS models, such as the maternal …

The immediate and long-term effects of exposure to early life stress (ELS) have been
documented in humans and animal models. Even relatively brief periods of stress during the …