“Early life adversity is a robust risk factor for life-long aberrant responses to stress, which can contribute to several major mental illnesses, including depression, in adulthood. Our findings identify an important role for ELA-induced alterations of microglial actions during a sensitive brain development period, resulting in augmented excitatory synapses that change behavioral and hormonal responses to further stress over a person’s lifetime,” says Tallie Z. Baram, distinguished professor in the Departments of Anatomy & Neurobiology, Pediatrics, Neurology, and Physiology & Biophysics at the UCI School of Medicine.