Stress, vulnerability and resilience: a developmental approach

Our studies support the hypothesis that all experiences during life, including early experiences in-utero, will influence the expression of genes, and in the end the socio-emotional and cognitive development later in life. This model of ‘epigenetic programming’ suggests the predictive power of the environment in-utero and early childhood on mental health later in life. The stress diathesis model proposes that this association is probably determined by a neurodevelopmental pathway with individual differences in neural and endocrine responses to stress. However, genotypes influencing the neural and endocrine stress responses are ‘plastic’, which implies that they can be modulated by environmental influences during life.