Professor Paul Lucassen, Center for Neuroscience, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam, NL, is visiting Aarhus and will give a Guest Talk entitled: "Hippocampal plasticity in relation to (early) stress and depression".

2015.12.11 | Henriette Blæsild Vuust

Paul J. Lucassen

Center for Neuroscience, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Hippocampal plasticity in relation to (early) stress and depression.

Abstract

Early-life adversity is associated with age-related cognitive decline and an increased vulnerability to develop psychopathologies like depression, later in life. It remains elusive however, which elements in the early environment are instrumental, and what the underlying molecular mechanisms are.

It is remarkable that both the experience of stress during this sensitive period, e.g. abuse or neglect, as well as malnutrition during early life, affect later brain structure and function to a very similar extent. We hypothesize that key factors during the early-life period, including micronutrients, stress hormones and sensory stimuli from the mother, exert a synergistic action that prepares the pup or child for an optimal adaptation to its future environment. Disturbance of key mediators during early development may result in a failure to properly adapt to the later life context.

Because the hippocampus continues its development postnatally and also remains highly plastic in adult life, this brain region is particularly sensitive to environmental disturbances during the early-life period, that may program adult brain structure and function, and possibly also metabolism, in a long-lasting manner, in part through epigenetic modifications.

• PJ Lucassen et al., Perinatal programming of hippocampal structure and function; emerging roles of stress, neurogenesis, epigenetics and early nutrition. Trends Neurosci 2013.
• PJ Lucassen et al., Neuropathology of stress. Acta Neuropathol 2014.
• PJ Lucassen et al., Regulation of adult neurogenesis and plasticity by (early) stress, glucocorticoids and inflammation. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol 2015;7:a021303. 

ALL ARE WELCOME

Read more about Professor Lucassen ...

www.uva.nl/en/contact/staff/item/p.j.lucassen.html