Michael J. Meaney, CM, CQ, FRSC, (born 1951) is a professor at McGill University specializing in biological psychiatry, neurology, and neurosurgery, who is primarily known for his research on stress, maternal care, and gene expression.
His research team has "discovered the importance of maternal care in modifying the expression of genes that regulate behavioral and neuroendocrine responses to stress, as well as hippocampal synaptic development" in animal studies.
[1] The research has implications for domestic and public policy for maternal support and its role in human disease prevention and economic health.
This research was the first to establish a causational relationship between maternal care and behavioral epigenetic programming by cross fostering pups.
[6] Meaney also studied this causal relationship between maternal care and epigenetic programming in estrogen receptor expression in the medial pre-optic area of the brain.