Scholars from across the disciplines have long postulated the role of the brain in translating between early life experiences and later life behaviors. In the early 1880s, as a young scientist in his twenties, Freud produced the first detailed anatomic description of the medulla oblongata and its linkages to the cerebellum within the central nervous system; he then spent the rest of his life grappling with the functional implications of these physical connections. More recently, scientists have seized upon advances in neuroimaging and molecular genetics to generate more detailed depictions of brain structure and function in living subjects. In doing so, they are confronting some fundamental questions at the very heart of psychoanalysis.

In a recent study published in Biological Psychiatry, Hanson and colleagues measured the impact of three types of early life stress (ELS)—early