Nongenomic transmission across generations of maternal behavior and stress responses in the rat.

In the rat, variations in maternal care appear to influence the development of behavioral and endocrine responses to stress in the offspring. The results of cross-fostering studies reported here provide evidence for (i) a causal relationship between maternal behavior and stress reactivity in the offspring and (ii) the transmission of such individual differences in maternal behavior from one generation of females to the next. Moreover, an environmental manipulation imposed during early development that alters maternal behavior can then affect the pattern of transmission in subsequent generations. Taken together, these findings indicate that variations in maternal care can serve as the basis for a nongenomic behavioral transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity across generations.

[1]  D. Williams,et al.  Changes in licking behaviour of rat mother following handling of young , 1974 .

[2]  S. A. Barnett,et al.  Early Stimulation and Maternal Behaviour , 1967, Nature.

[3]  R. Plomin.  Behavioral genetics. , 1991, Research publications - Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease.

[4]  P. Plotsky,et al.  Pathways to the Secretion of Adrenocorticotropin: A View from the Portal * , 1991, Journal of neuroendocrinology.

[5]  Craig W. Berridge,et al.  Physiological and behavioral responses to corticotropin-releasing factor administration: is CRF a mediator of anxiety or stress responses? , 1990, Brain Research Reviews.

[6]  J. L. Hess,et al.  Modification of the corticosterone response curve as a function of handling in infancy , 1969 .

[7]  R. Mccarty,et al.  Maternal influences on adult blood pressure of SHRS: A single pup cross-fostering study , 1996, Physiology & Behavior.

[8]  J. Stern.  Offspring-induced nurturance: animal-human parallels. , 1997, Developmental psychobiology.

[9]  M. Le Moal,et al.  Prenatal Stress Induces High Anxiety and Postnatal Handling Induces Low Anxiety in Adult Offspring: Correlation with Stress-Induced Corticosterone Secretion , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[10]  R. Dantzer.  The Psychology of Fear and Stress, J.A. Gray (Ed.). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1987), viii and 422 pp, ISBN 0-521-27098-7 , 1989 .

[11]  G. Koob,et al.  Corticotropin releasing factor, stress and behavior , 1994 .

[12]  H. Harlow.  The Nature of Love , 1958 .

[13]  R. Sapolsky,et al.  Effect of neonatal handling on age-related impairments associated with the hippocampus. , 1988, Science.

[14]  JS Rosenblatt.  Psychobiology of maternal behavior: contribution to the clinical understanding of maternal behavior among humans , 1994, Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992). Supplement.

[15]  A. Fleming,et al.  Factors influencing maternal responsiveness in humans: Usefulness of an animal model , 1988, Psychoneuroendocrinology.

[16]  L. Fairbanks.  Individual Differences in Maternal Style , 1996 .

[17]  Shakti Sharma,et al.  Maternal care during infancy regulates the development of neural systems mediating the expression of fearfulness in the rat. , 1998, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[18]  Shakti Sharma,et al.  Maternal care, hippocampal glucocorticoid receptors, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal responses to stress. , 1997, Science.

[19]  S. Suomi.  Early determinants of behaviour: evidence from primate studies. , 1997, British medical bulletin.

[20]  R. Olsen,et al.  GABAA Receptor Subtypes: Ligand Binding Heterogeneity Demonstrated by Photoaffinity Labeling and Autoradiography , 1993, Journal of neurochemistry.

[21]  S. Levine.  Plasma-Free Corticosteroid Response to Electric Shock in Rats Stimulated in Infancy , 1962, Science.

[22]  D. Greenblatt,et al.  Reduced benzodiazepine sensitivity in patients with panic disorder: comparison with patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and normal subjects. , 1996, The American journal of psychiatry.

[23]  J. Herman,et al.  Neurocircuitry of stress: central control of the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenocortical axis , 1997, Trends in Neurosciences.

[24]  J. Squire,et al.  Relationships between maternal behavior of SHR and WKY dams and adult blood pressures of cross-fostered F1 pups. , 1989, Developmental psychobiology.

[25]  C. Nemeroff,et al.  Physiology and pharmacology of corticotropin-releasing factor. , 1991, Pharmacological reviews.

[26]  Victor H. Denenberg,et al.  Physiological and behavioral effects of infantile stimulation , 1967 .

[27]  Marinus H. van IJzendoorn.  Intergenerational transmission of parenting: A review of studies in nonclinical populations , 1992 .

[28]  M. Weissman,et al.  Intergenerational transmission of parental bonding among women. , 1997, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[29]  S. Feldman,et al.  Attachment Across the Life Cycle , 1993 .

[30]  T. Field.  Maternal depression effects on infants and early interventions. , 1998, Preventive medicine.

[31]  G. Paxinos,et al.  The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates , 1983 .

[32]  J. Gray,et al.  The psychology of fear and stress , 1971 .

[33]  V. Denenberg,et al.  Nongenetic Transmission of Information , 1967, Nature.

[34]  M. Le Moal,et al.  Adoption reverses the long-term impairment in glucocorticoid feedback induced by prenatal stress , 1995, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[35]  R. W. Schulz.  The Psychology of Fear and Stress , 1974 .

[36]  R. D. Myers,et al.  Prostaglandins and hypothalamic neurotransmitter receptors involved in hyperthermia: A critical evaluation , 1994, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[37]  V. Denenberg,et al.  CRITICAL PERIODS, STIMULUS INPUT, AND EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY: A THEORY OF INFANTILE STIMULATION. , 1964, Psychological review.