This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Erica Barris. Got a minute?

In recent years, researchers have learned that trauma can be inherited, passed down due to changes in DNA, what's known as

epigenetics, but researchers recently uncovered a new wrinkle to the story.

The effects of trauma which can be transmitted to the offspring can be reversed by a positive

experience.

That's Isabel Manzu, professor of neuroepagenetics at the University of Zurich.

She and colleagues studied newborn male mice

and their mothers that were separated from each other,

which caused them both to experience traumatic stress.

Those male mice and their male offspring

display trauma symptoms symptoms which made them

different from other mice that had not been separated from their mothers.

But when these symptomatic mice were exposed to positive experiences,

their behavior changed, as did the fate of their offspring.

And we show that the negative consequences of this, which are depressive behaviors,

cognitive problems, antisocial behaviors, risk-taking. This can be reversed if the father, after being traumatized, was exposed to a positive environment.

So this reverses the symptoms and it also reverses the biological reason,

the biological cause for the symptoms in the progeny, which are the epigenetic marks. Epigenitic marks can

be corrected in sperm cells

by this positive experience.

The study was in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

Mansu says the behavioral changes

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