Inherited Fear

The American journalist Sally Herships has long felt she carries within herself a sense of the trauma suffered by her grandmother a century ago, in Russia, and subsequently passed down through her own mother. How is it possible to explain a fear that isn't of any thing tangible or present, a fear that isn't our own, that isn't rooted in direct experience?

Psychiatrists know that behaviour can condition how we feel with physically-measurable impact - for example, upon the PAG or periaqueductal gray which is the primary control centre for pain modulation. But now, neuro-epigeneticists believe it's possible that our biology may be altered by trauma and then, apparently, carried on through reproduction to future generations.

"It's like the ghost of a ghost," says Sally, "or the memory of a shadow".

Starting with testimony from her own family, Sally examines the relationship between psychology and biology, talking to the offspring of victims of the Holocaust, and a neuroscientist who ...