Early Life Stress Exposure and Neurodevelopment: Predicting and Preventing Stress-related Disorders
Exposure to stressful events, especially those that are chronic, unpredictable, or severe, is a significant risk factor for disorders of the brain and body later in life. The evidence for this relationship is especially strong if the stressful events occur at particular times in the lifespan, namely from the perinatal window through adolescence. These ‘early life’ experiences confer risk to later life dysfunction. Importantly, it has also been established that there are ways to mitigate the potential negative consequences of early life stress. Despite the established relationship between early life stress and later life disease, there is still much to understand about the mechanistic underpinnings that confer risk to body, brain, and behavioral dysfunction throughout the lifespan. A deeper understanding of the way that exposure to stressors interacts with other risk factors (social environment, sex/gender, genetic risk, resources) is critical to further our understanding of the complexity of risk. Further, we also need to understand the ways in which risk can be mitigated, as the prevention of the stressful events themselves is not always feasible. It is important to know what kinds of preventative measures are effective, the kinds of measures that can be put into place in the wake of a traumatic event, and the mechanistic underpinnings of all types of risk mitigation. This collection will bring together leading scholars in the area of early life stress to cover the breadth of research on this important topic.