AUTHOR=Kundakovic Marija , Lim Sean , Gudsnuk Kathryn , Champagne Frances A. TITLE=Sex-Specific and Strain-Dependent Effects of Early Life Adversity on Behavioral and Epigenetic Outcomes JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry VOLUME=4 YEAR=2013 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00078 DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00078 ISSN=1664-0640 ABSTRACT=
Early life adversity can have a significant long-term impact with implications for the emergence of psychopathology. Disruption to mother-infant interactions is a form of early life adversity that may, in particular, have profound programing effects on the developing brain. However, despite converging evidence from human and animal studies, the precise mechanistic pathways underlying adversity-associated neurobehavioral changes have yet to be elucidated. One approach to the study of mechanism is exploration of epigenetic changes associated with early life experience. In the current study, we examined the effects of postnatal maternal separation (MS) in mice and assessed the behavioral, brain gene expression, and epigenetic effects of this manipulation in offspring. Importantly, we included two different mouse strains (C57BL/6J and Balb/cJ) and both male and female offspring to determine strain- and/or sex-associated differential response to MS. We found both strain-specific and sex-dependent effects of MS in early adolescent offspring on measures of open-field exploration, sucrose preference, and social behavior. Analyses of cortical and hippocampal mRNA levels of the glucocorticoid receptor (