ReviewParental Advisory: Maternal and Paternal Stress Can Impact Offspring Neurodevelopment
Section snippets
Maternal Mechanisms of Intergenerational Stress Transmission
Stress during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk for autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, affective disorders, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in offspring, largely related to the specific stage of pregnancy in which stress experience occurred (4). For instance, epidemiological and clinical studies report that early pregnancy, when epigenomic patterning is established, has the greatest impact on offspring brain development 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Risk and outcome of
Paternal Mechanisms of Intergenerational Stress Transmission
The number of studies examining the interaction of stress with the paternal germline to impact the programming of offspring development has grown in the last decade, with fascinating results implicating male life experiences in intergenerational transmission. The majority of epigenetic patterning of the male germ cell occurs prenatally, with some de novo DNA methylation and histone modifications occurring postnatally, before puberty [for review, see Ly et al. (76)]. During spermatogenesis,
Conclusions
The focus of stress as a risk factor for neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders and the mounting evidence for the intergenerational transmission of parental stress exposure brings to light exciting new mechanisms involved in transmission of sex-specific stress signals. Many affected tissues are extraembryonic and easily accessible (e.g., placenta, semen), and thus the translational potential from animal models to prospective human studies may facilitate development of necessary
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant Nos. MH108286, MH099910, and MH104184 (to TLB).
The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.
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