Resilience and adaptive aspects of stress in neurobehavioral development.

摘要

This Special Issue of Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews is based on a Symposium presented at the 40th Annual Conference of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology held in San Francisco, CA in July 2009. The Symposium was designed to discuss empirical and theoretical advancements in our understanding of early life stress-induced adaptations in behavior and brain development. This Special Issue contains review papers from a number of participants at the Symposium, together with other contributions from neurobiologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, ecologists, and anthropologists who were asked to write articles of interest and relevance to the theme of 'Resilience and Adaptive Aspects of Stress in Neurobehavioral Development'.The destructive effects of stress are far better characterized in the scientific literature compared to research aimed at understanding early life stress as a potentially constructive force in development. The present collection of review articles was therefore assembled to summarize the available studies of humans and animal models that show how stress calibrates development to match early environmental demands. Depending on diverse aspects of this dynamic developmental process, phenotypic outcomes may be adaptive or maladaptive.