Michael Meaney
Michael J. Meaney,
Meaney is associate director of the Research Centre at the
Animal studies
Meaney is an expert in stress and epigenetics, with hundreds of papers and thousands of citations culminating in a h-index of 135 as of 2019. Meaney has studied the epigenetic effects of stressors ranging from aversive early life experience to obesity. His early research focused on the relationship between maternal care and stress response in rat pups. This work demonstrated that pups removed from their maternal environment and handled for 15 minutes per day had lower hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal responses than pups separated from their mothers for 3 hours per day and pups with no handling whatsoever. Meaney hypothesized that these changes were related to glucocorticoid receptor density and its role in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis feedback.[5] Meaney and colleagues tested his hypothesis by examining the effect of maternal care on GR expression. They separated mother rats into two groups: high licking and grooming mothers and low licking and grooming mothers. Pups of high licking and grooming mothers had a significantly greater density of glucocorticoid receptors in their hippocampi than pups of low licking and grooming mothers. This research was the first to establish a causational relationship between maternal care and behavioral epigenetic programming by cross fostering pups.[6] Meaney also studied this causal relationship between maternal care and epigenetic programming in estrogen receptor expression in the medial pre-optic area of the brain. The behavioral results showed that high licking and grooming mothers birth pups that grow to be high licking and grooming mothers, even with cross fostering.[7] Meaney's animal research and hypotheses are broadly applicable, showing similar results when applied to humans.
Human studies
Meaney’s early research provided impetus for applied behavioral epigenetic research in humans. His first study compared suicidal subjects with a history of child abuse to suicidal subjects without a history of child abuse. Meaney found further evidence to support his hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor hypothesis when he discovered that abuse victims had less expression of hippocampal glucocorticoid receptors than both non-abused suicide victims and non-suicidal subjects. This suggests that childhood abuse alters the hippocampus in a way that is related to suicidal behavior.[8]
Publications
- Diorio J, Meaney MJ (July 2007). "Maternal programming of defensive responses through sustained effects on gene expression" (PDF). J Psychiatry Neurosci. 32 (4): 275–84. PMID 17653296.
- McGowan PO, Sasaki A, Huang TC, Unterberger A, Suderman M, Ernst C, Meaney MJ, Turecki G, PMID 18461137.
- Weaver IC, Meaney MJ, Szyf M (February 2006). "Maternal care effects on the hippocampal transcriptome and anxiety-mediated behaviors in the offspring that are reversible in adulthood". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 103 (9): 3480–5. PMID 16484373.
- Weaver IC, Cervoni N, Champagne FA, D'Alessio AC, Sharma S, Seckl JR, Dymov S, Szyf M, Meaney MJ (August 2004). "Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior". Nat. Neurosci. 7 (8): 847–54. S2CID 1649281.
- Meaney MJ (2001). "Maternal care, gene expression, and the transmission of individual differences in stress reactivity across generations". Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 24: 1161–92. PMID 11520931.
Books
- John T. Cacioppo; Gary G. Berntson; Ralph Adolphs; C. Sue Carter; Richard J. Davidson; Martha K. McClintock; Bruce S. McEwen; Michael J. Meaney; Daniel L. Schacter; Esther M. Sternberg; Stephen S. Suomi; Shelley E. Taylor, eds. (2002). Foundations in social neuroscience. Cambridge, Mass.: ISBN 978-0-262-53195-5.
See also
- Epigenetics
- Douglas Hospital
References
- ^ "Researcher Profile - Michael Meaney, Douglas Mental Health University Institute". McGill University.
- ^ "CIHR program in Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability and Neurodevelopment (MAVAN) Douglas Hospital Research Center, Department of Psychiatry". McGill University.
- ^ "Michael Meaney, Moshe Szyf and Gustavo Turecki honoured for their work in epigenetics". News article from Douglas Mental Health University Institute. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
- ^ "Appointments to the Order of Canada". Governor General of Canada.
- PMID 8497182.
- S2CID 1649281.
- PMID 16513834.
- PMID 19234457.