Meaney and colleagues, one of the most cited papers published in the prestigious journal Nature Neuroscience. They had shown previously that offspring of more "attentive" rat mothers {those that frequently nurse, groom, and lick their pups} become adults with lower glucocorticoid levels, less anxiety, better learning, and delayed brain aging. The paper showed that these changes were epigenetic-that mothering style altered the on/off switch in a gene relevant to the brain's stress response.
( Robert M. Sapolsky )
[ Behave: The Biology of Humans ]
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