NMDA receptor–dependent structural plasticity links early life stress to persistent aggression
Jessica T. Jacobs, Jacob C. Nordman · 2026
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Description
Jessica T. Jacobs and Jacob C. Nordman present a 2026 hypothesis-driven review linking early life stress to lifelong aggression through changes in synapse structure. Stress early in life is a major risk factor for reactive aggression that can outlast the original hardship by decades. The machinery that locks the change into the brain was poorly defined.
The authors gather clinical, postmortem, imaging, and animal evidence around NMDA receptor-dependent structural plasticity in aggression circuits, centered on the pathway from the medial amygdala to the ventromedial hypothalamus. Animal work suggests stress adds dendritic spines and excitatory synapses there, placed where they drive firing hardest, which would raise circuit excitability and lower the bar for aggressive outbursts. The review closes by weighing two approved NMDA blockers, ketamine and memantine, as candidate tools against this rewiring.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jessica T. Jacobs, Jacob C. Nordman |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 38684 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |