A gene for responding to stress

The brains of stressed mice with one allele of a gene look like mice that have not been stressed. The neurons in their hippocampus look normal.

The brains of unstressed mice with a different allele look like normal mice after extended stress. Hippocampal neurons look shrunken; they have a reduced number of dendrites.

This is a step toward figuring out why some people suffer from a bad environment and some don't.