Prevention science is doing the best it can to keep up with the latest developments in gene and brain research. But big changes may be ahead. Three plenary sessions today at this week’s Society for Prevention Research conference suggested that new evidence in the fields of epigenetics and neuroscience may profoundly change how prevention scientists do their work, and thus how policy makers and practitioners engage with children.

Randy Jirtle, Director of the Epigenetics and Imprinting Laboratory at Duke University Medical Center, was one of the speakers offering up some surprising results. The takeaway? Jirtle says preventions may be found for some notoriously difficult-to-treat neurological disorders by figuring how genes are programmed by the world around them. The point is that epigenetics may have far more profound an influence than genetics. Nature has it over nurture.

Jirtle explained how, from the moment of conception, a child’s genes are buffeted by environmental forces. If those forces are traumatic enough—if, for example, a child is deprived of a healthy diet—the consequences can be dire. Those consequences will not only be seen in childhood but also in the elevated risk of neurological disorders and other diseases in adulthood.

Jirtle says his research suggests that the genes responsible for maintaining mental health can be dramatically changed even in utero. His study showed how pregnant mothers living under famine conditions had dramatically increased risks for having children with severe mental health problems like schizophrenia.

“We are what our mother’s eat, and what our mother’s mothers’ ate before us!” Jirtle said.

Jirtle’s lab research has used mice. He found that by changing a pregnant mouse’s diet, one could control for the genetic expression of the mouse’s offspring.

Jirtle cautioned against reading too much into those results. While animal studies have long been the staple of geneticists, Jirtle says newly discovered differences between mice and humans have complicated what conclusions can be drawn from their use. For example, it turns out that humans have fewer imprinted genes –the kind that pass directly from parent to child—than mice. Further study of human subjects is necessary before any conclusions can be drawn.

One of the day’s other plenary sessions delved beneath the big environmental chains of risk to make some exciting discoveries. Gustavo Turecki from the Department of Psychiatry at Quebec’s McGill University began his work where some other folks had stopped—by delving into why childhood sexual abuse increases the chances of suicidal behavior twelvefold. His analysis looked at how early deprivation can alter the expression of genes that control anxiety, impulsivity and aggression.

Although much of the science on offer is radical, it can help explain and improve tried-and-true methods. In her plenary presentation today, Deborah Yurgelun-Todd from the University of Utah showed explored the science behind why it is critical to place children in nurturing environments following trauma. For Yurgelun-Todd, there are physiological reason to be nice to people who have suffered nasty experiences. It’s about strengthening the limbic and cortical circuits in the brain. Nurturing can actually help mend neural dysfunctions that underlie some psychopathology.

More prosaic still are the conclusions of Ronald Dahl at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He has spent years of sophisticated study looking into why some adolescents suffer a lack of synergy in different developmental processes. His conclusions are the kind any parent would love. Teenagers should get better sleep and do more physical activity.

Plenary sessions coming up tomorrow look at the new discoveries in genetics and brain development and how it might be applied to tihe treatment of addiction. Robert Zucker from the University of Michigan is one of the scheduled speakers. His work is beginning to show that early intervention with children at high risk of developing alcohol addiction has shown results.

The crisis point for high-risk adolescents, says Zucker, occurs when a normal increase in the desire for risk-taking and sensation-seeking gets ahead of their developing self-regulation skills. He says you can re-wire the brain of potential alcoholics and prevent them from developing the problem in the first place.