Estimad@s.

Les compartimos información sobre la convocatoria realizada por la revista NEUROTOXICOLOGY AND TERATOLOGY para su SPECIAL ISSUE «EFFECTS OF STRESS EXPOSURE DURING DEVELOPMENT ON NEUROBEHAVIORAL AND NEUROENDOCRINE FUNCTION”.

Stress, which can be defined as an actual or perceived threat to homeostasis, is a ubiquitous factor in modern societies. Stress exposure can adversely impact subsequent neurobehavioral and neuroendocrine functioning, especially when exposure occurs when the brain is developing (i.e., from the fetal period through adolescence). Such negative effects may result from stress alone as the primary developmental insult or from interactions of stress with other kinds of insults such as drugs or environmental toxicants. Importantly, the mechanisms underlying stress-mediated developmental perturbations are not yet fully understood. For example, increased glucocorticoid release is widely thought to mediate at least some of the adverse effects of stressful experiences, especially when the stress is chronic. However, stress gives rise to numerous other responses at the neurophysiological, cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, and epigenetic levels, and in many cases, the role of these responses has been understudied.
Although we usually think about those stressors that are unique to a particular individual, recent events remind us that some stressors such as natural disasters, wars, or pandemics can induce both physical and psychological stress that can impact millions of people around the world, including infants, children, adolescents, and pregnant women. Given the timeliness of this topic, Neurotoxicology and Teratology is organizing a Special Issue on the theme of “Effects of Stress Exposure during Development on Neurobehavioral and Neuroendocrine Function.” This Special Issue, which will be co-edited by Drs. Jerrold Meyer, Gregg Stanwood, and Sonya Sobrian, is aimed at advancing our understanding of how stressful events perturb developmental trajectories, including characterization of such perturbations, as well as exploratory studies into their underlying mechanisms.

Submissions may include:

• Primary data driven reports
• Critical review papers
• Prospective/retrospective human studies
• Empirical studies using models of acute or chronic stress in laboratory animals
  

The following are examples of relevant topics for this Special Issue:

• Delineating windows of vulnerability to stress during prenatal and early postnatal development
• Influences of stress on subsequent child emotional and/or cognitive development
• Long-lasting neurobehavioral effects of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
• Models of developmental stress exposure in laboratory animals: Relevance for human clinical studies
• Sex differences in the effects of developmental stress exposure
• Transgenerational effects of stress exposure (human or animal studies)
• Studies of developmental stress exposure involving natural events such as war, environmental disasters, or pandemics
• Biological (e.g., neurobiological, neuroendocrine, neuroimmune, or epigenetic) mechanisms that mediate the long-lasting effects of developmental stress exposure
• Interactions among drug and environmental chemical exposures and developmental stress
• Pertinent gene-environmental stress interactions

All submissions to this Special Issue will be fully peer-reviewed, and because Neurotoxicology and Teratology is abstracted and indexed in BIOSIS, Current Contents/Life Sciences, EMBASE, EMBiology, ETOH, Elsevier BIOBASE, MEDLINE®, Science Citation Index, and Scopus, its contents will be available through typical search engines of the medical literature (e.g., PubMed). The Special Issue will also be circulated to all subscribers of the journal and be accessible via ScienceDirect.
This Special Issue will be in the form of a Virtual Special Issue (VSI), which is an approach to publishing special Issues that allows us to address one of the most common complaints by authors – slow publication speed. With a VSI, accepted manuscripts are published in the first available regular issue, and corresponding authors will receive 50 days free access to the final published version of their manuscript. Thus, authors do not need to wait until all the Special Issue manuscripts are accepted to have their manuscript published. Simultaneously, articles will appear in a VSI section on the Neurotoxicology and Teratology website and on ScienceDirect.
To be considered for inclusion in this Special Issue, please submit your manuscript to Neurotoxicology and Teratology by January 31, 2024, via the electronic submission system (https://www.editorialmanager.com/ntt/default.aspx). Manuscripts should be assigned to the category “VSI: Dev Stress” at the beginning of the submission process, and a cover letter to the Editor should also specify that the submission is targeted for this issue.
We hope that you will consider this invitation seriously and submit your best work to this issue. Recent trends in scientific publication indicate that articles that appear in special issues receive a great deal of attention and we hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity. If you have any questions, feel free to contact one of the Co-Editors. We look forward to your contributions to this Special Issue.

Thank you.

Special Issue Co-Editors’ Contact Information
Jerrold S. Meyer, Ph.D.
University of Massachusetts
Dept. of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Email: jmeyer@umass.edu
Gregg Stanwood, Ph.D.
Florida State University
School of Medicine
Email: gregg.stanwood@med.fsu.edu
Sonya K. Sobrian, Ph.D.
Howard University
School of Medicine
Email: ssobrian@howard.edu
Neurotoxicology and Teratology Contacts
Jerrold S. Meyer, Ph.D., Special Issues Editor; Email: jmeyer@umass.edu