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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Abstract
Lifetime experiences are known to be important determinants of mental health and illness, but the biological mechanisms through which social exposures become physiologically and psychologically manifest remain poorly understood. Epigenetic modifications provide a plausible and, increasingly, empirically supported molecular mechanism that can account, in part, for how stressful and traumatic experiences become biologically embedded to influence subsequent mental and physical health. The goal of this presentation is to provide an overview of how stressful and traumatic events, experienced throughout the lifecourse, have biological consequences at the molecular level with implications for subsequent mental health. The objectives are to: (i) illustrate how both molecular and environmental variation shape risk of stress-related mental illness (ii) define DNA methylation and show how it can translate social experiences into markers of risk for, or resilience to, mental illness; and (iii) provide evidence that adverse early life experiences impact stress- relevant molecular phenotypes into adulthood.
