Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program, UCSF/UC Berkeley, San Francisco, CA, United States.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2011 Jun;35(7):1552-61. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.03.012. Epub 2011 Mar 30.
A wealth of data from the last fifty years documents the potency of early life experiences including maternal care on developing offspring. A majority of this research has focused on the developing stress axis and stress-sensitive behaviors in hopes of identifying factors impacting resilience and risk-sensitivity. The power of early life experience to shape later development is profound and has the potential to increase fitness of individuals for their environments. Current findings in a rat maternal care paradigm highlight the complex and dynamic relation between early experiences and a variety of outcomes. In this review we propose adaptive hypotheses for alternate maternal strategies and resulting offspring phenotypes, and suggest means of distinguishing between these hypotheses. We also provide evidence underscoring the critical role of context in interpreting the adaptive significance of early experiences. If our goal is to identify risk-factors relevant to humans, we must better explore the role of the social and physical environment in our basic animal models.
过去五十年的大量数据记录了生命早期经历（包括母婴护理）对后代的影响。大多数此类研究都集中在发育中的应激轴和应激敏感行为上，以期确定影响适应力和风险敏感性的因素。生命早期经历塑造后期发展的力量是深远的，并有潜力提高个体对环境的适应能力。目前在大鼠母婴护理范例中的发现强调了早期经历与各种结果之间的复杂和动态关系。在这篇综述中，我们提出了关于替代母婴策略和相应后代表型的适应性假设，并提出了区分这些假设的方法。我们还提供了证据，强调了在解释早期经历的适应意义时，背景的关键作用。如果我们的目标是确定与人类相关的风险因素，我们就必须更好地探索社会和物理环境在我们基本动物模型中的作用。
