A strong association exists between neurocognitive disorders and early-life adversity, and experimental animal models support a causal relationship, in addition to the critical effects of genetics and gene–environment interactions.The emotional aspects of adversity, including unpredictability of environmental and parental signals, most profoundly influence cognitive outcomes.Mechanistically, early-life adversity might disrupt the normal maturation of the brain circuits that underlie cognitive functions by modulating synaptic maturation and pruning.Novel cross-species imaging and epigenomic technologies hold promise for identifying mechanisms, biomarkers and mechanism-based preventive approaches and interventions.
