Early Life Stress Affects Regulation: A Role for Exercise Interventions.

Early life stress (ELS) encompasses exposure to aversive experiences during early development, such as neglect or maltreatment. Animal and human studies indicate that ELS has maladaptive effects on brain development, leaving individuals more vulnerable to developing behavioral and neuropsychiatric disorders later in life. This result occurs in part to disruptions in Brain derived neurotrophic factor () gene regulation, which plays a vital role in early neural programming and brain health in adulthood.