ArticleTranslational psychiatry2016
Fragmentation and high entropy of neonatal experience predict adolescent emotional outcome.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 155 papers.
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Who cites it
155 citing papers in PubMed, 226 citations in OpenAlex.
- Nociceptin orphanin F/Q Pathways are dysregulated by stress and modulate reward responsiveness and motivated behavior across species.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Maternal Social Support Reshapes the Offspring Brain Transcriptome to Buffer Prenatal Stress in Mice.Research square · 2026Article
- Temporal reorganization of maternal care during early life stress in mice.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Effects of early life adversity on acute metabolic outcomes during neonatal development.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Loss of pleasure (Anhedonia): A sex-dependent, cross-species consequence of unpredictable signals to the perinatal brain.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Experience-dependent development of vagal circuitry in rodents and humans.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Early life adversity disrupts adult social reward motivation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Probing biomarkers and clinical utility of reward learning across species using the Probabilistic Reward Task: 20 years of findings.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Early resource scarcity drives persistent transcriptional changes and vascular remodeling in the female prefrontal cortex.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Early-life adversity in rodents: Experimental design is of the essence.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Peptide signaling in the paraventricular thalamus contributes to disrupted adult reward behaviors after early-life adversity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Corticotropin releasing hormone-expressing inputs to the thalamic paraventricular nucleus: pathways from mother to memory?Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Sex and Stress Govern the Function and Innervation of a Basolateral Amygdala to Nucleus Accumbens Corticotropin-Releasing Hormone/GABA-Expressing Projection.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Unpredictability is a childhood adversity that contributes to mental health problems.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Article
- Neurobiology of resilience to early life stress.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Microbiome-behavior coupling shapes infant adaptation to early maternal unpredictability.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Prenatal maternal mood instability and child externalizing problems: An ecological momentary assessment study.Journal of affective disorders · 2025Article
- Review
- Early life stress induces social behavioral deficits and peripheral biomarker alterations in adolescence that perpetuate intergenerationally.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
95 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Vulnerability to emotional disorders including depression derives from interactions between genes and environment, especially during sensitive developmental periods. Across evolution, maternal care is a key source of environmental sensory signals to the developing brain, and a vast body of work has linked quantitative and qualitative aspects of maternal care to emotional outcome in children and animals. However, the fundamental properties of maternal signals, that promote advantageous vs pathological outcomes in the offspring, are unknown and have been a topic of intense study. We studied emotional outcomes of adolescent rats reared under routine or impoverished environments, and used mathematical approaches to analyze the nurturing behaviors of the dams. Unexpectedly, whereas the quantity and typical qualities of maternal care behaviors were indistinguishable in the two environments, their patterns and rhythms differed drastically and influenced emotional outcomes. Specifically, unpredictable, fragmented maternal care patterns translated into high-entropy rates of sensory signals to the offspring in the impoverished cages. During adolescence, these offspring had significant reductions in sucrose preference and in peer-play, two independent measures of the ability to experience pleasure. This adolescent anhedonia, often a harbinger of later depression, was not accompanied by measures of anxiety or helplessness. Dopaminergic pleasure circuits underlying anhedonia are engaged by predictable sequences of events, and predictable sensory signals during neonatal periods may be critical for their maturation. Conversely, unpredictability maternal-derived signals may disrupt these developmental processes, provoking anhedonia. In sum, high-entropy and fragmented patterns of maternal-derived sensory input to the developing brain predicts, and might promote, the development of anhedonia in rodents, with potential clinical implications.
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