Early life stress and altered social behaviors: A perspective across species
Open accessAbstract
Childhood and adolescent affiliations guide how individuals engage in social relationships throughout their lifetime and adverse experiences can promote biological alterations that facilitate behavioral maladaptation. Indeed, childhood victims of abuse are more likely to be diagnosed with conduct or mood disorders which are both characterized by altered social engagement. A key domain particularly deserving of attention is aggressive behavior, a hallmark of many disorders characterized by deficits in reward processing. Animal models have been integral in identifying both the short- and long-term consequences of stress exposure and suggest that whether it is disruption to parental care or social isolation, chronic exposure to early life stress increases corticosterone, changes the expression of neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, and facilitates structural alterations to the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala, influencing how these brain regions communicate with other reward-related substrates. Herein, we describe how adverse early life experiences influence social behavioral outcomes across a wide range of species and highlight the long-term biological mechanisms that are most relevant to maladaptive aggressive behavior.
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Animal models of early life stress are already shown to be applicable to aggression and alcohol use.
“Animal models of early life stress are already shown to be applicable to aggression (reviewed in Parise et al. 2025; Takahashi 2025) and alcohol use (reviewed in McDonnell-Dowling and Miczek 2018).”
From Decoding the bidirectional links between alcohol misuse and aggression: toward a unified translational framework (2026) · cites this paper as Parise et al. 2025
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Russell, N. M., Frier, M. D., Bortolato, M., & Mangieri, R. A. (2026) · Psychopharmacology · doi:10.1007/s00213-025-06938-0 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- Parise, L. F., Joseph Burnett, C., & Russo, S. J.
- Affiliations
- Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (US)
- Corresponding author
- Parise, Lyonna F.
- Russo, Scott J.
- Venue
- Neuroscience Research
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2025-02
- Volume
- 211
- Pages
- 65-74
- ISSN
- 0168-0102 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC11102940
- OpenAlex
- W4388817996
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 13
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 6
- FWCI
- 0.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- Neuroscience Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH114882, R01MH104559, R01MH127820, R01MH133299)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Keywords
- early life stress, social behavior, aggression, childhood abuse, conduct disorder, mood disorders, reward processing, corticosterone, social isolation, hypothalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, animal models, cross-species comparison, maladaptive behavior
- MeSH terms
- Adverse Childhood Experiences, Aggression, Animals, Brain, Humans, Social Behavior, Stress, Psychological
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