It’s widely understood that early life adversity has an impact on mental illness and cognitive problems later in life. There are theories as to the mechanisms of how this works, but it’s difficult to test in humans. Tallie Baram is a professor of neurophysiology and biophysics at the UC Irvine department of pediatrics. And she co-authored a recent study in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology with Ali Mortazavi, professor of developmental and cell biology at UC Irvine. Dr. Baram says that imaging studies show changes in brain structure and circuits, and cognitive and emotional tests also demonstrate a change in function. But it’s difficult to study the mechanism, to try to understand how this is happening, because scientists can’t take samples of brain tissue to determine how and when genes are expressed.

Related Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-019-0496-3