[bruu_]

That's interesting that the mice with stressed parents dealt better with stress. I've typically interpreted this strain of study as a sort of depressing, "rich get richer" of biology concept where every generation gets more stressed out until they somehow get removed from the gene pool. But it seems like the exact opposite is the case, that there is an adaptive numbing effect

[cpncrunch]

>That's interesting that the mice with stressed parents dealt better with stress

It doesn't say they dealt with stress better. They had a blunted stress response, and in humans that might lead to depression, etc.

Presumably there must be an evolutionary reason. If the environment is very stressful, it's perhaps better to have a lower HPA axis response to stress, otherwise you would be at risk of various diseases.

[gvb]

"Dealt better with stress" is not the conclusion (inference) that concerns them in the paper:

"This is relevant, and problematic, because blunted stress responses in humans are associated with neuropsychiatric disorders like depression, schizophrenia, and autism." (emphasis mine).

[bruu_]

I interpreted it to mean that they have a blunted stress response, nothing more. Maybe a lot of people that undergo stress have a twofold reaction: 1. downregulate the response to similar stressors 2. still have some bad feelings about what happened

I would rather have 1 & 2 than just 2 alone. So yeah, when they say "associated with" they aren't saying "caused"