"How Do You Feel About Your Mother?": Epigenetics of Early Experience

Severe childhood abuse is linked to altered expression of a glucocorticoid receptor gene in suicide completers.

Freud asserted that character is destiny. Neurobiologists might instead say that genes are destiny. Researchers in a Canadian autopsy study now help us understand how early experience permanently modifies genetic expression in systems that determine our responses to the world around us."
Reference: McGowan PO et al. Epigenetic regulation of the glucocorticoid receptor in human brain associates with childhood abuse. Nat Neurosci 2009 Mar; 12:342.

Hyman SE. How adversity gets under the skin. Nat Neurosci 2009 Mar; 12:241.
Medline: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...?dopt=Abstract