Narrator: This is Science Today. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have discovered that stress early in life releases a stress hormone that can modify the brain structure, resulting in lower cognitive function later in life.

Baram: So, why is this important? UNICEF has come out in 2004 and declared that over fifty percent of the world children grow up under chronic stress - war, famine, loss of parents, migration - and we can't do anything about it. We probably can not prevent this or eliminate it. If there is a way to post-hoc treat the brain - to try to post-hoc try to prevent or counteract the effect of early life experience, and particularly severe stress, that would be something that would therapeutically helpful.

Narrator: Neurobiologist Tallie Z. Baram says in their study of rat pups, they were used a receptor to block the stress hormone's effects on the brain.

Baram: We did that after the early life stress again for one week and this treatment reversed or prevented the effects of the early life stress.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.