“How Do You Feel About Your Mother?”: Epigenetics of Early Experience

Freud asserted that character is destiny. Neurobiologists might instead say that genes are destiny. Researchers in a Canadian autopsy study now help us understand how early experience permanently modifies genetic expression in systems that determine our responses to the world around us.

The investigators measured hippocampal expression of the glucocorticoid receptor gene NR3C1 in the brains of 12 suicide completers with histories of early trauma (severe childhood abuse or neglect), 12 suicide completers without such histories, and 12 controls who died accidentally and did not have such histories. Independent of diagnosis, expression of NR3C1 and its promoter was significantly lower in the suicide+trauma group compared with the other groups. …