PSY 3290 - Stress and Development

How does stress exposure impact our development? In this course we take a lifespan/life history and evolutionary-developmental perspective to examine how environmental information in general and early life stress in particular affects human development. The course begins with an overview of basic evolutionary-developmental theory. Then we tackle one of the great challenges in developmental science: how do genes and environment interact to contribute to our understanding of individual differences in brain development and function? To achieve this we closely examine processes of basic genetics, epigenetics (related to gene expression), and how epigenetics is linked to stress regulation. Resilience, as a key to understanding risks for emotional and physical health and for creating successful interventions, will receive careful consideration. Next we examine the social inequality and the stress-health relationship or how adversity ³gets under the skin.² For this unit we look at the biological mechanisms for transmitting messages of inequality and the consequences for emotional and physical health.