Effects of perinatal stress and deprivation on functional brain development

The article summarizes the critical importance of perinatal emotional experience on functional brain maturation and the development of intellectual and emotional behaviors from a neurobiologic standpoint. Emphasis is given to the effect of early emotional experience, which triggers neuronal and synaptic selection and reorganization processes in prefrontal cortical and subcortical limbic pathways and thereby optimizes the functional capacity of these "emotional" systems which play an essential role in learning and memory formation and retrieval.