Dr David Hamilton Home Page

Motherly care and DNA
(www.drdavidhamilton.com)

In February 2007 a scientific study in the Journal of Neuroscience reported that motherly love affected the growth of the brains of rat pups. It causes genes to switch on that led to changes in hippocampus of the brain.

The study showed that the mother’s care altered the activation of genes that controlled the brain’s response to stress. In other words, the pups grew up to be more confident and less fearful if they received lots of motherly attention. In the absence of the motherly attention, the pups were more fearful in later life and didn’t handle stress as well.

So the genes responded to the attention that the pup received from its mother. It is likely that the same effect will occur in humans too. Yes, DNA responds to the things that happen to you. In particular, your genes respond to what you eat, the toxins you are exposed to, how much exercise you take, and your thoughts and emotions.

And what is equally as interesting is that the effect on those genes carried over onto the next generation. Other studies in this field of science (Epigenetics) have shown that your life experiences not only affect your offspring, but their offspring, and theirs, and theirs. And your DNA has been coloured by the experiences of your forefathers.

You can read about it further in the following article in The Guardian newspaper: http://www.guardian.co.uk/genes/article/0,,2012408,00.html .
The scientific reference is Weaver, I. C. G., et al ., ‘The transcription factor nerve growth factor-inducible protein A mediates epigenetic programming: altering epigenetic marks by immediate-early genes’, Journal of Neuroscience , 2007, 27(7), 1756–68.