Long-Term Impact of Early Life Events on Physiology and Behaviour

This review discusses the effects of stress and nutrition throughout development and summarises studies investigating how exposure to stress or alterations in nutrition during the pre-conception, prenatal and early postnatal periods can affect the long-term health of an individual. in general, the data presented here suggest that that anything signalling potential adverse conditions later in life, such as high levels of stress or low levels of food availability, will lead to alterations in the offspring, possibly of an epigenetic nature, preparing the offspring for these conditions later in life. However, when similar environmental conditions are not met in adulthood, these alterations may have maladaptive consequences, resulting in obesity and heightened stress sensitivity. the data also suggest that the mechanism underlying these adult phenotypes might be dependent on the type and the timing of exposure.Young Investigator Travel awardNWONIHFondecytCoordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Johns Hopkins Univ, Sch Med, Dept Psychiat & Behav Sci, Baltimore, MD 21205 USAUniv Penn, Sch Vet Med, Dept Anim Biol, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USAPontificia Univ Catolica Chile, Div Obstet & Gynaecol, Sch Med, Santiago, ChilePontificia Univ Catolica Chile, Div Pediat, Sch Med, Santiago, ChileUniv Chile, Fac Chem & Pharmaceut Sci, Dept Biochem & Mol Biol, Lab Neurobiochem, Santiago, ChileUniv Fed Rio Grande do Sul, ICBS, Dept Fisiol, Porto Alegre, RS, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Psychobiol, São Paulo, BrazilUniversidade Federal de São Paulo, Dept Psychobiol, São Paulo, BrazilYoung Investigator Travel award: NSF-IOS1328157NWO: 825.10.032NIH: MH087597NIH: MH091258NIH: MH099910NIH: HD055030Fondecyt: 1120928Fondecyt: 1130049Web of Scienc

Pregnancy risk factors in autism: a pilot study with artificial neural networks

Autism is a multifactorial condition in which a single risk factor can unlikely provide comprehensive explanation for the disease origin. Moreover, due to the complexity of risk factors interplay, traditional statistics is often unable to explain the core of the problem due to the strong inherent nonlinearity of relationships. The aim of this study was to assess the frequency of 27 potential risk factors related to pregnancy and peri-postnatal period