How does childhood stress establish the groundwork for adult depression? Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Ludmer researcher Dr Rose Bagot found genes regulated by the transcription factor OTX2 – a protein controlling the rate of transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA – primed the response toward […]
There’s a neuron for depression or, more precisely, resiliency to the chronic stress that can cause depression. What makes some of us vulnerable to depression and others not? Is it exposure to chronic stress or a preceding susceptibility? The answer may lie in a neuron promoting resilience. Ludmer researcher Dr Rose Bagot and colleagues at […]
New research highlights the limitations of using standard birth-weight cutoffs to define long-term vulnerability. Children born too small or too large are at increased risk for several diseases later in life, including metabolic and mental-health problems. Early identification is important to initiating proper and close follow-up; however, Ludmer Centre researchers and collaborators led by […]
Diseases and mental illnesses that manifest across our lifetime may be linked to our body’s ability to fight off infections through fever – or febrile response – a potent mechanism for combating infection. Based on a growing body of evidence, we now know that childhood adversity and inflammation both play critical roles in the diseases […]
New research provides insight into how a profound remodeling of cell morphology in a specific brain region —the medial preoptic area (MOPA)— might relate to individual differences in maternal behavior. Both pregnancy hormones and pup sensory stimuli increase neuronal activation leading to a remodeling of neuronal circuits within certain brain regions, including the MPOA, that […]
Could a genetic variant in our DNA decrease susceptibility to stress and overeating? Glucocorticoids, which are linked to overeating, regulate our body’s energy supply in response to stress. Ludmer Centre researcher Dr Patricia P Silveira and colleagues from research institutes in Brazil, Toronto and Montreal found that adolescents who carry an A3669G variant of the […]
Do you remember what you had for dinner last night? The hippocampus, a brain structure linked to memory formation, participates in this mental process. Memory impairment, such as an inability to remember what you ate, is an early sign of hippocampal damage due to insulin resistance, which itself further disrupts a person’s feeding patterns. […]