Michael J. Meaney, CM, CQ, FRSC, (born 1951) is a professor at

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

specializing in

biological psychiatry Biological psychiatry or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscie ...

neurology Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...

, and

neurosurgery Neurosurgery or neurological surgery, known in common parlance as brain surgery, is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spinal cord and ...

, who is primarily known for his research on stress, maternal care, and

gene expression Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, protein or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype, as the final effect. ...

. His research team has "discovered the importance of maternal care in modifying the expression of genes that regulate behavioral and neuroendocrine responses to stress, as well as hippocampal synaptic development" in animal studies. The research has implications for domestic and public policy for maternal support and its role in human disease prevention and economic health. Meaney is associate director of the Research Centre at the

Douglas Mental Health University Institute The Douglas Mental Health University Institute (french: Institut universitaire en santé mentale Douglas; formerly the Douglas Hospital and originally the Protestant Hospital for the Insane) is a Canadian psychiatric hospital located in the borou ...

, director of the Program for the Study of Behaviour, Genes and Environment, and James McGill Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology and Neurosurgery,

. He was named a "Most Highly Cited Scientist" in the area of neuroscience by the Institute for Scientific Information in 2007 and was also elected to the Royal Society of Canada and named a Knight of the National Order of Quebec. For research on stress he has received a Senior Scientist Career Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in 1997. He also, along with fellow researcher from the Douglas Institute Dr.

Gustavo Turecki Gustavo Turecki (born May 11, 1965) is a Canadian psychiatrist, suicidologist, neuroscientist who is a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair Tier in Major Depressive Disorder and Suicid ...

, was awarded the Scientist of the Year Award by

Radio-Canada The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (french: Société Radio-Canada), branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian public broadcaster for both radio and television. It is a federal Crown corporation that receives funding from the government. ...

. In 2011, he was made a member of the

Order of Canada The Order of Canada (french: Ordre du Canada; abbreviated as OC) is a Canadian state order and the second-highest honour for merit in the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, after the Order of Merit. To coincide with the c ...

Animal studies

Meaney is an expert in stress and epigenetics, with hundreds of papers and thousands of citations culminating in a

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

of 135 as of 2019. Meaney has studied the epigenetic effects of stressors ranging from aversive early life experience to obesity. His early research focused on the relationship between maternal care and stress response in rat pups. This work demonstrated that pups removed from their maternal environment and handled for 15 minutes per day had lower hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal responses than pups separated from their mothers for 3 hours per day and pups with no handling whatsoever. Meaney hypothesized that these changes were related to

glucocorticoid receptor The glucocorticoid receptor (GR, or GCR) also known as NR3C1 (nuclear receptor subfamily 3, group C, member 1) is the receptor to which cortisol and other glucocorticoids bind. The GR is expressed in almost every cell in the body and regulates ...

density and its role in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis feedback. Meaney and colleagues tested his hypothesis by examining the effect of maternal care on GR expression. They separated mother rats into two groups: high licking and grooming mothers and low licking and grooming mothers. Pups of high licking and grooming mothers had a significantly greater density of glucocorticoid receptors in their hippocampi than pups of low licking and grooming mothers. This research was the first to establish a causational relationship between maternal care and behavioral epigenetic programming by cross fostering pups. Meaney also studied this causal relationship between maternal care and epigenetic programming in estrogen receptor expression in the medial pre-optic area of the brain. The behavioral results showed that high licking and grooming mothers birth pups that grow to be high licking and grooming mothers, even with cross fostering. Meaney's animal research and hypotheses are broadly applicable, showing similar results when applied to humans.

Human studies

Meaney’s early research provided impetus for applied behavioral epigenetic research in humans. His first study compared suicidal subjects with a history of child abuse to suicidal subjects without a history of child abuse. Meaney found further evidence to support his hippocampal glucocorticoid receptor hypothesis when he discovered that abuse victims had less expression of hippocampal glucocorticoid receptors than both non-abused suicide victims and non-suicidal subjects. This suggests that childhood abuse alters the hippocampus in a way that is related to suicidal behavior.

Publications

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Books

References

External links