ArticleDevelopmental cognitive neuroscience2019
Early-life stress, microbiota, and brain development: probiotics reverse the effects of maternal separation on neural circuits underpinning fear expression and extinction in infant rats.
Article in Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- Chronic early life stress alters the microbial and transcriptional profile of the zebrafish gut.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Early-life gut microbiome maturity regulates blood-brain barrier and cognitive development.Gut microbes · 2025Article
- Chronic Early Life Stress Alters the Microbial and Transcriptional Profile of the Zebrafish Gut.Research square · 2025Article
- Chronic stress is associated with altered gut microbiota profile and relevant metabolites in adolescents.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- Nutritional interventions to counteract the detrimental consequences of early-life stress.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- Longitudinal associations between the infant gut microbiome and negative affect in toddlerhood.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Exposure to the herbicide glyphosate leads to inappropriate threat responses and alters gut microbial composition.Frontiers in toxicology · 2025Article
- Shared and unique transcriptomic signatures of antidepressant and probiotics action in the mammalian brain.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Article
- Characteristics of the oral microbiome in youth exposed to caregiving adversity.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2024Article
- Psychobiotics and the Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis: Where Do We Go from Here?Microorganisms · 2024Review
- Effect of a multi-strain probiotic mixture consumption on anxiety and depression symptoms induced in adult mice by postnatal maternal separation.Microbiome · 2024Article
- Early life stress shifts critical periods and causes precocious visual cortex development.PloS one · 2024Article
- Immune activation state modulates infant engram expression across development.Science advances · 2023Article
- Early life adversity as a risk factor for cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.Translational neurodegeneration · 2023Review
- Gut-Brain cross talk: The pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental impairment in necrotizing enterocolitis.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2023Review
- Early-life gut microbiota and neurodevelopment in preterm infants: a narrative review.Frontiers in nutrition · 2023Review
- Review
- Neurobiological effects of a probiotic-supplemented diet in chronically stressed male Long-Evans rats: Evidence of enhanced resilience.IBRO neuroscience reports · 2021Article
- Article
- Contributions of neuroimmune and gut-brain signaling to vulnerability of developing substance use disorders.Neuropharmacology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Early-life stress has pervasive, typically detrimental, effects on physical and mental health across the lifespan. In rats, maternal-separation stress results in premature expression of an adult-like profile of fear regulation that predisposes stressed rats to persistent fear, one of the hallmarks of clinical anxiety. Probiotic treatment attenuates the effects of maternal separation on fear regulation. However, the neural pathways underlying these behavioral changes are unknown. Here, we examined the neural correlates of stress-induced alterations in fear behavior and their reversal by probiotic treatment. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to either standard rearing conditions or maternal-separation stress (postnatal days [P] 2-14). Some maternally-separated (MS) animals were also exposed to probiotics (Lactobacillus rhamnosus and L. helveticus) via the maternal drinking water during the period of stress. Using immunohistochemistry, we demonstrated that stressed rat pups prematurely exhibit adult-like engagement of the medial prefrontal cortex during fear regulation, an effect that can be prevented using a probiotic treatment. The present results add to the cross-species evidence that early adversity hastens maturation in emotion-related brain circuits. Importantly, our results also demonstrate that the precocious neural maturation in stressed infants is prevented by a non-invasive probiotic treatment.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.